King and Lionheart
by themadmanhopes
Summary: "He wanted this. He shouldn't, but he did. He wanted this feeling. He wanted this sense of humanity he had never experienced before. Because he felt it, with her. Which, he knew, was absolutely mad..." A menagerie of Doctor/Clara oneshots. Some with teeth, some with claws, some with big tear-filled eyes, some with lots of warm fuzzy fluff. Complete with your own whouffle playlist.
1. King and Lionheart

A/N greetings! Okay summary of what this is going to be: basically a collection of Doctor/Clara one shots based on songs. They will all be longish- probably at least a couple of thousand words each. They will all be different too, some fluff, some angst, some adventure, some AU, etc. But they are all whouffle.

I've wanted to get this out for months now, these have all just been sitting there waiting to be published! I just had to finish my other fic first...I hope you all enjoy and please review to tell me what you think, constructive criticism, suggestions for oneshots, suggestions for songs etc. thanks!

This one is a more adventure-y one. The song is awesome you should all go listen to it on YouTube too. :)

ALSO, this operates under the headcanon that Clara's mum was killed by the autons, as the day she died is the same day as that episode.

•••

King and Lionheart- Of Monsters and Men

_Taking over this town they should worry,  
__But these problems aside I think I taught you well.  
__That we won't run, and we won't run, and we won't run._  
_That we won't run, and we won't run, and we won't run._  


_And in the winter night sky ships are sailing,  
__Looking down on these bright blue city lights.  
__And they won't wait, and they won't wait, and they won't wait.  
__We're here to stay, we're here to stay, we're here to stay._

_Howling ghosts – they reappear  
__In mountains that are stacked with fear  
__But you're a king and I'm a lionheart_

_His crown lit up the way as we moved slowly  
__Past the wondering eyes of the ones that were left behind  
__Though far away, though far away, though far away  
__We're still the same, we're still the same, we're still the same._

_Howling ghosts – they reappear  
__In mountains that are stacked with fear  
_But you're a king an I'm a lionheart.

_And in the sea that's painted black,  
__Creatures lurk below the deck  
__But you're a king and I'm a lionheart_

_And as the world comes to an end  
__I'll be here to hold your hand  
__'Cause you're my king and I'm your lionheart._

•••

The Doctor had told her that the forests whispered.

He'd been excited to visit them, said that he'd been here once before, many years ago. Well, a different side of the planet, but all the same, he'd said.

He'd said they could see inside her mind. That they were thousands of years old, living, sentient, conscious beings that inched up towards the sky, yearning for its sunlight. That they were nothing like normal trees, they were psychic, could tap into the brainwaves of almost any living thing. That they would murmur secrets in your ear, offer advice and consolation, the whispering trees.

But he had not told her they were frightening. Malevolent. Evil, even, if there was such a thing.

And of course she was also lost.

And the trees were whispering.

_Lost, lost, lost,_ came their voices, wind through the branches. _Lost, lost._

They looked like trees, if a little unique: tall and thin with leaves as long and thin as the hairs on her head, though silvery-white as she hoped her hair wouldn't be any time soon.

But they were not trees.

They were monsters.

whispering.

_Lost, lost, the child is lost!_

She continued her slow trek among them, boots sinking into the soft dirt and slipping on the strange black moss. The Doctor was nowhere to be seen, not a fleeting shadow behind the trees, not a joyful call of her name, not a strong presence by her side.

She had simply turned around, and he had gone. Was it the trees messing with her mind, seeing inside her head?

She was alone. She was lost.

The whispers came again, like the rustle of leaves in a winter wind, _Lost, child, lost._

"What do you want?"

She'd always been scared of being lost. Until her mother managed to convince her that she could meet be truly lost, that she would always find her. Young, innocent Clara had believed her.

But her mother was lost herself. She couldn't come and find her.

There was a warbling, breezy noise from the trees, like laughing. But light, cold, twisted.

_The child's mother, the child's mother, she's lost! She's lost!_

Clara swallowed, kept her feet steady. Step, step, step.

_She is dead, the mother! Rotting in the ground, a mangy corpse of flesh and yellowed bone!_

Step, step, step.

_The mother was killed, the mother was murdered! By a phenomenon of time, one in a million, and she was that one._

She kept her eyes ahead, through the trees, the silver trees. Where was the Doctor? Where was he?

_The monsters that no one will see! No one will believe it! Plastic humans come to life? No! It was a terrorist, they say. An underground weapon. They have dismissed it, now. They saw it with their own eyes, yet they do not believe!_

Her foot slipped down a mossy rock, she grabbed hold of the nearest trunk, letting go of it as soon as she was back on her feet.

_The child dares to touch the all-seeing forest? She dares, she dares!_

She quickened her step, she needed to get out of here, now, now. These were the things she tried not to think of, the things these otherworldly creatures were unearthing. _Stop_.

_But the child's mother! She was killed by a monster no one will admit existed! How did she die then, they ask? Terrorist, psychopath, serial killer! Or... _they paused, there was a second of utter silence, peace, sanctuary. _Suicide!_

She started running then, no, she wouldn't think about it, just run and run and get out of this godforsaken place!

_And it is the child who suffers most for the mother's death. Why is it her? Yes, yes, she should have been there! She should have gone with the mother! She should have saved her, died in her place!_

Thud, thud, of her footsteps. Thud, thud, of her heart.

Run, run, run.

_It is the child's fault!_

There were tears, now, hot tears on her cheeks that she didn't remember shedding. Run, run, _run_.

_That's it, child! Run from yourself! Run from the ghost of the mother you killed! Run from the father who resents you for it! Run from the family you took pity on! Run from the friends you let down! Run from the places you could never go! Run from the Doctor man and run from the knowledge that vibrates in his bones!_

She ran. Faster, harder, blinder. Her heart pounded, her body the skin of a resounding drum.

_The child has fallen in love, she has! She tries not to, she fights! But she cares too much, at the wrong time in the wrong place with the wrong person! Too loyal, too clever, not brave enough_!

The whispers were like crows, pecking at her brain, clawing at her ears, screeching and screaming.

_Run, child, run!_

She ran.

•••

THE DOCTOR

It was one minute they were strolling happily through the whispering forest, he was wishing a good day to the trees and Clara was smiling beside him. And then the next minute she was gone, he was alone.

He shouldn't have taken them to a different forest. He should have listened to sense. They should never have come here.

Where was Clara?

And then the trees started to whisper.

_Hello, Doctor man._

"Hello?" he called. "I hope you don't mind us admiring you, brilliant creatures, you are!"

There was a hissing, whistling noise, like a sharp wind through leaves.

"Could you tell me where Clara's gone off to? She's my friend, short, brown hair, nice mind?"

_The child is lost, Doctor man._

"Yes, yes, but where is she?"

_The Doctor man is lost without the child. The Doctor man needs the child, he does? He'll go mad without her, he will_.

"Er, alright, could you just tell me where she is?"

_The Doctor man has an extensive mind. He knows more than we do, much more. He was seen things we can never see. The Doctor man has seen the Time War, has he not?_

"...yes. I'm a Time Lord. What have you done with Clara?"

_He cares too much about the child. He will lose the child, the child will die soon. And the Doctor man will die with her._

He took out his sonic screwdriver, did a quick scan of the closest tree. The whispering trees he'd visited, centuries ago had been pleasurable, welcoming. These...these were different.

_The Doctor man has murdered his family. His family of thousands. He has obliterated them all. And then there are more, the silver men, the warmakers, the racnoss, the vampires of the sea. How many more? How many others are to come?_

"What do you want?" he asked, steeling himself.

_We want the Doctor man to run, is what we want. We want to the Doctor man to run, run, run!_

"Run? Run where?"

_The Doctor man questions everything. He is too curious, too fascinated by even the most evil of things. He lets the monsters kill the innocent, before realising his mistake and killing the monster when it is too late!_

He started walking, weaving between the trees, willing the whispers to cease. He was not good at remembering, he was not good at looking back. But he was good at running. Oh yes, he was very good at running.

_Run, monster man! Run!_

He quickened just a little, reluctant to do as the forest was telling him to but wanting so much to get away, to run away. He didn't want to hear this, he didn't want to remember, he wanted to find Clara and run.

_Run from the millions of lives you have destroyed! Run from the hundreds you have changed into warriors! Run from your children, your children of time! Run from the devils you've tried to kill, run from the gods you wouldn't harm! Run from yourself who is both and neither! Run from your past and regrets and worries! Run from your losses that you can never find!_

Thud, thud, thud, thud. His heart, in his head. Thud, thud, thud, thud. His mind, made of lead.

_Run from the child you cradle to your heart! Run from the one you should not care about! Run from the child who cares too much about you! Run from what's coming, what has always been!_

Thud, thud, thud, thud. His feet on the stones. Thud, thud, thud, thud. It burns in his bones.

_Run from the monsters you killed! Run from the monsters you saved! Run from the memory of monsters you let ravage themselves! Run from the monsters of time and memory! Run from the monsters, run, run!_

"Stop," he whispered. "What do you want? Stop this."

_Begging! The Doctor man begs! Keep running, Doctor man! The monsters are coming! Run, run, monster man, run!_

He ran.

The whispers came, they didn't stop. They arced and shot and tore at his head, words without meaning but with all the meaning of the world, voices without sound but with all the sound he could bear.

He kept running, darting, running away, away, don't look back, don't look back at the memories, don't look back at the trail behind.

A shadow flitting behind the trees. There. There. Again.

Clara.

He ran faster, more desperate, he had to go to her, he had to find her, she was lost, she was lost, she was lost, he was found.

And their paths crossed, she jumped back in shock before falling into his outstretched arms.

She was crying.

Clara rarely cried.

He took her hand then, because they couldn't stop running for long.

_Run, run, monster man, run, run, child! Run, human and chronarch scum! Run away from the all-seeing forest, unworthy ones! Run, run, RUN!_

He stopped.

Clara looked around, eyes wild. "We have to run! We have to get out!"

"No," he said slowly. "No, we don't."

_Run!_

"I won't run. We won't run."

_Monster man, run!_

Clara was tugging at his hand.

"No. No. We walk. We leave because we want to, not because we are forced to. We won't run."

It took everything to take that first step, slowly, carefully, without breaking out into a sprint. But he couldn't give them what they wanted.

Clara pulled ahead of him, she wanted to run, they were still whispering to her. He squeezed her hand, tugged her to his side.

"We won't run," he said to her again.

Her eyes were wide when she looked at him, biting her lip.

_Monster man! Monster man! You are a monster, monster man! Run from the monsters, monster man!_

"It's fine. They can only talk. That's all they can do."

"Words can do worse than anything physical," she replied shakily.

"True. But we won't run. They're just racist."

"Racist?" she probably would have laughed if in any other situation. He wanted to hear that laugh.

_Run from your past, monster man!_

"A racist whispering forest. Yes. Big meanies."

She laughed then, short, tense, humourless. But a laugh all the same.

The forest was still whispering to her, he could tell. He wondered what it was saying. But she set her face, glared straight ahead, stepped forward steadily with him.

Braveheart Clara.

They were almost at the edge now, he could see the trees thinning into a clear space, and the TARDIS standing out in the sun.

_Child, monster man! Run!_

They didn't run.

_RUN!_

They walked, hand in hand, into the light.

A/N *discreetly slips Welcome to Night Vale references into dw fanfiction*

okay so everyone I would love it if you reviewed, with suggestions, concrit, whatever. :)


	2. Counting Stars

A/N wooooah I got a lot of reviews for that first chapter. Thank you all so much! I hope you all love this one just as much :) (and review? Pretty please?)

ALSO, I have written a one shot. On Eleven's regeneration. It's my second, and this one...well let's just say its not particularly...happy. Or ideal. Or anything like I hope the real thing will go. Basically, I had a lot of feels and let them run wild. It would be really nice if you guys had a read! It's called 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night'.

Today's song is Counting Stars by OneRepublic.

•••

_Lately, I've been, I've been losing sleep  
__Dreaming about the things that we could be  
__But baby, I've been, I've been praying hard,  
__Said, no more counting dollars  
__We'll be counting stars, yeah we'll be counting stars_

_I see this life like a swinging vine  
__Swing my heart across the line  
__And my face is flashing signs  
__Seek it out and you shall find_

_Old, but I'm not that old  
__Young, but I'm not that bold  
__I don't think the world is sold  
__Just doing what we're told_

_I feel something so right  
__Doing the wrong thing  
__I feel something so wrong  
__Doing the right thing_

_I couldn't lie, couldn't lie, couldn't lie  
__Everything that kills me makes me feel alive_

_I feel the love and I feel it burn  
__Down this river, every turn  
__Hope is a four-letter word  
__Make that money, watch it burn_

_Old, but I'm not that old  
__Young, but I'm not that bold  
__I don't think the world is sold  
__I'm just doing what we're told_

_I feel something so wrong  
__Doing the right thing_

_I couldn't lie, couldn't lie, couldn't lie  
__Everything that drowns me makes me wanna fly_

_Lately, I've been, I've been losing sleep  
__Dreaming about the things that we could be  
__But baby, I've been, I've been praying hard,  
__Said, no more counting dollars  
__We'll be counting stars_

_Take that money  
__Watch it burn  
__Sink in the river  
__The lessons I've learned_

_Everything that kills me makes feel alive_

•••

THE DOCTOR

Water was dripping off him in waves, his hair was a mess, his shoes like buckets, and the rain just kept on pouring down. He was running, laughing, hopping in the puddles. There was a girl running beside him, clutching his hand, laughing just as loud, although deftly avoiding the puddles.

It was these sort of times the Doctor loved. Just these little moments when he could forget, when he could lose himself in adrenaline and joy and fun and pretend he was young again.

He fumbled while unlocking the TARDIS, and they both spilled inside to seek refuge from the deluge of rain. Not that it would have made much difference had they spent another few minutes running about, they were already as saturated as one could be.

Clara collapsed in the chair, still smiling and shaking her head, while he took off his coat and hung it over the railing to dry. He patted the wood of the door, knowing that his TARDIS was not inclined to getting wet.

"You are such a dork, you know," she remarked, Clara, not the TARDIS. "I haven't got around much in the 102nd century, but I don't think that insulting the President of New New America, or whatever it is, is exactly a brilliant idea. Especially when you call him a thick old cabbage head. His hair wasn't _that_ green."

"Yes, well, he was being rude about my bow tie. And then he wanted to instate you as a new citizen for his breeding program. And his bowl cut was a quite disgusting khaki. His ears were all leafy too."

She cocked an eyebrow at him. "I suppose you're the expert on funny looking facial features."

It took him a minute to figure out what she meant by this, and by the time he shouted, "My chin is absolutely normal!" after her, she was already off into the TARDIS corridors.

The Doctor whistled and hummed to himself as he took out a rag and began clearing the space-gunk off the interior maintenance controls. Once relatively clean, he jiggled with them a bit until they lit up before flicking the dryer switch. The result left most surfaces of the room almost unbearably hot, and only rendered himself a little less damp. He'd have to fix that up one day.

He soon found himself thinking back to just minutes ago, thinking about Clara's young, pure laugh and its contrast to his own old, restricted one, thinking about the way her dark hair fell across her eyes, how her cheeks shone with excitement and her skin sparkled with droplets of water...

He straightened up, where had his mind wandered off to?

Did he fancy her?

What did that even mean?

He didn't. He couldn't. He wouldn't.

"What were _you_ thinking about to blush like a tomato, hey?"

Clara skipped up to the console, now in a flowy purple dress, tights, and boots. Not that he was noticing.

"No-nothing. Nothing! Where do you want to go?"

"That was unnecessarily quick. Not really in the mood for another adventure, bit tired out from running from the future US military in the drenching rain."

"Do you want me to take you home then?" he was sure she didn't miss the disappointment in his tone.

"I didn't say that."

He didn't say anything either.

"You know, I've always loved the stars. My mum knew dozens of their names and constellations, she'd always point them out to me. Our stars," she paused.

He spun around to face her. "Stars? Stars? You haven't seen anything yet!"

She smiled gently, with her eyes more than her lips.

"The constellations of Amoris, greatest stellar view _in the universe_-can you just press that button right there- coming right up..."

He jerked his head at the doors as they landed, watched as Clara pushed them open to the world outside.

She stood on the threshold, gazing up at the sky, unmoving, unspeaking. He joined her, following her line of sight to the void of a trillion stars.

Her expression was so innocent, and human, and full of awe at the spread of sky he'd seen a hundred times before. The sight wasn't wondrous to him anymore, now that he knew the name and origin and story and end of every single star that twinkled and shone up there. Now that he knew all the planets that orbited them, and all the forms of life that may once or someday live on them. Now that he knew the physics and structure and history behind everything he could see, there was no awe anymore, there was only memories.

But Clara couldn't seem to tear her eyes away. And it was beautiful.

They ended up lying side by side on the mossy ground, a little away from the TARDIS, easier to see the sky by. He'd made sure to send them to an uninhabited stretch of plain, no life nor unnatural thing for miles or centuries.

He began pointing out the separate stars to her, all their names and planets and solar systems and stories. She listened to all his words, but he had a feeling she didn't care so much for them than the stars themselves, so very, very many of them.

"See the dim blue-ish one all the way over there? Igtain, it's called. At least that's one of its names. I saved a human battle fleet from crashing into it once. Then I threw all their weapons into it.

"And the orange kind of one over by the TARDIS? I saw that one as it began. And I watched it as it collapsed. Destroyed half a galaxy, it did. I was there when it was just a void in space, too."

"That's a lot to see," she said.

"Yes," he mused. It was. "Yes, it is."

"Too much?"

He kept his eyes on the swathes of pinpricked light. "You can never have too much of a good thing! It's like Saturdays. If every day was a Saturday, the universe would be a better place."

But he thought, _Yes, Clara. Too much. Much too much._

Somehow she must have caught his unsaid words in the air, or seen them in his face, because she replied with the same fabricated light humour, "Imagine that. No dreary Mondays. Probably just thought up the solution to world peace, there. I'm fairly sure most wars are sparked by Monday-morning-itis."

He sort-of laughed. Sort-of didn't.

The back of her palm was brushing against his. But he wasn't noticing. Her shoulder was pressed up against his side. He wasn't noticing that either.

He definitely, certainly wasn't looking more at Clara than the stars themselves.

Blimey. What was wrong with him?

What were his thoughts doing?

_Count the dollars_

_Count the days_

_Count the causes for your haze_

_Count the pennies_

_Count the ticks_

_Count the waning blackened wicks_

_Count the nickels_

_Count the suns_

_Count the loved and loving ones_

_Count the shillings_

_Count the years_

_Count the reasons for your tears_

Count them up, count them up. No need to add one more.

Do not add one more.

"Do I have something on my face?"

He blinked. "Do you have cat bling on your mace?"

She rolled her eyes. "You're staring at me. What's so interesting?"

"I wasn't staring at anything."

"You really kind of were."

"I resent that accusation."

"You're blushing too."

"No I'm not."

"Nice try."

"I wasn't staring! I'm not blushing!" he scoffed. He wasn't. No. Never.

"Ha," she paused, looking at him quizzically, and then even a little sadly, before seeming to decide on something despite the conflict in her expression. "Do you like me?"

"What?!" Why couldn't he just say no?

"Do you like me?"

What to say, what to say?

"Of course I like you. You're my friend. You accompany me on my travels about time and space."

Clara darted her eyes back up to the sky. "Good," she said. "It would've been horrible to think you've hated me all this time."

Ouch.

She twitched her hand back to her side, no longer touching his.

Double ouch.

Why was her simple presence so close to him making his heart race? Why was his heart sinking at her sudden detachment from him? Why did he so regret his answer to her question?

They lay in silence. Minutes ticked, ticked, ticked by. Clara breathed and blinked and gazed so near, so far. And then he couldn't bear it any longer.

He moved his arm across the space between them, and took her hand. He lifted it to the sky, pointing at a particular star above their heads.

"See that white one? The brightest in the whole sky? That one's dead."

He hoped she was still listening.

"That star died years and years and years ago. In a brilliant sprawling supernova. It burned too long, too heavy, and it exploded into beautiful light. And the pressure was too much, it collapsed in on itself and pulled everything around it with it. It's a black hole now. Eating up the rest of the universe, where once it was a shining star. But we can still see it. To us, it's still alive. Still beautiful."

Silence, for a while. Just silence. Pure silence. And the stars.

He turned onto his side, couldn't stop his hand coming to rest on Clara's cheek. Couldn't stop from softly kissing her forehead.

This was not right. This would end in nothing good. This would kill him.

But why did he feel so intensely alive?

_Count the dollars_

_Count the days_

_Count what sets your heart ablaze_

_Count the shillings_

_Count the years _

_Count your strong and standing fears_

He couldn't keep lying.

He didn't want to keep lying.

But he had to try.

•••

A/N poem cos I felt like it. Have a nice day everyone!


	3. Thousand Years

A/N hello everyone! Me again. Just a note that this fic will be updated a lot more irregularly than my other whouffle one. Like, I might post one chapter a day or two after the other (like this one!) or there might be a gap of a week or two. It depends on my writing mood and motivation. Sorry :(

Also, it would be BRILLIANT if you guys could suggest some ideas for one shots, prompts and songs. Additionally, if you review I will love you forever.

Today's song is Thousand Years by Christina Perri, which I think is from twilight? Idk I haven't seen it but it's an awesome song you should go listen to it for the full effect. Thousand years is basically the whouffle anthem, every single word fits them perfectly (especially in TNOTD). On that note, this one is basically an insight into Clara and the Doctor's minds during that last scene. Plus additional cool stuff. Enjoy :)

•••

_Heart beats fast, colours__ and promises  
__How to be brave?  
__How can I love when __I'm afraid to fall?_

_But, watching you stand alone  
__All of my doubt, suddenly__ goes away somehow  
__One step closer._

_I have died everyday waiting for you,  
__Darling don't be afraid, __I have loved you  
__For a thousand years  
__I'll love you for a thousand more._

_Time stands still, beauty__ in all she is  
__I will be brave, __I will not let __anything take away  
__What's standing in front of me.  
__Every breath, every__ hour  
__Has come to this_

_One step closer._

_I have died everyday waitin__g for you  
__Darling don't be afraid, I__ have loved you  
__For a thousand years  
__I'll love you for a thousand more._

_All along I believed __I would find you  
__Time has brought your heart to me  
__I have loved you  
__For a thousand years_

_I'll love you for a thousand more_

_One step closer._

•••

"I have to go in there."

The realisation struck Clara all at once, now it all made some semblance of sense. The Doctor had seen her before. He had seen her die. Because she had, at this moment, entered his timestream and copied herself a thousand times along it. To save him from the Great Intelligence.

"Please. Please," the Doctor moaned, no longer writhing in pain but collapsed limply on the ground. "No."

"But this is what I've already done. You've already seen me do it. I'm the impossible girl. And this is why."

She had to do it. She _had to._

"Whatever you're thinking of doing, don't," River said. River Song. Whoever that really was. The Doctor's wife? But ignored this niggling voice at the back of her mind, it sounded a little like jealousy.

"If I step in there, what happens?"

"The time winds will tear you into a million pieces. A million versions of you, living and dying all over time and space. Like echoes."

Torn apart. Could she do that? Splinter her very being?

"But the echoes could save the Doctor, right?"

"But they won't be you. The real you will die. They'll just be copies."

Copies.

Not real.

But real enough.

"But they'll be real enough to save him. It's like my mum said, 'The soufflé isn't the soufflé. The soufflé is the recipe.' It's the only way to save him, isn't it?"

She was the recipe. The echoes would be her, the echoes would save him.

"The stars are going out!" Madame Vastra had re-entered the chamber. "And Jenny and Strax are dead." Clara didn't miss the desperate struggle for control in her voice. "There must be something we can do."

There was something. There was her.

"Well how about that?" she did all she could to keep her tone and words light, but could not deny that the sight of the crackling red tower of energy and prospect of nonexistence truly frightened her. "I'm soufflé girl after all."

"No. Please," the Doctor grunted, pleaded. She didn't listen to him. It was his only chance.

"If this works get out of here as fast as you can. And..." these could be her last words, maybe, what did she want them to be? What did she want him to know, do, after she was gone? "Spare me a thought now and then."

She knew she couldn't bear it if he'd just forget her. She found it a little ironic, actually, that she'd sort of planned for situations like this. That was why she had denied the so easy and simple way she had grown attached to the Doctor for so long. That was why she had her trick, her rule, that she could travel with him and see planets and save worlds, but she couldn't fall in love. That was the rule. And she had made it to avoid things just such as this, as she knew that to fall in love with that man would end in no happiness.

But here she was. Sacrificing herself, saving him.

"No. Clara!" he half-shouted again. She still ignored him.

She hoped he wouldn't forget her. Because she would never forget him.

"In fact, you know what?" she said, looking back at him and smiling a little. But, dear God, she was _afraid_. "Run. Run, you clever boy. And remember me."

She leapt forward.

Into the light.

The red light.

Faces.

So many faces.

And voices.

And words.

And stories.

And worlds.

All the Doctor's.

Victories, battle cries, celebrations, winners.

Deaths, fading screams, funerals, losers.

Loves, holding hands, locking eyes, endings.

Friends, running quick, watching skies, always.

Hates, burning might, all the dead, silent.

The Doctor.

The Doctor.

The Doctor.

She knew who he was.

She knew it all. She saw it all. She lived it all.

But who was Clara Oswald?

•••

Shattered.

Clara was shattered.

Shards of herself embedded in the fabric of everything.

She could see, feel, herself living a thousand lives. Dying a thousand deaths.

But somehow, she was also here. In this swirling world of grey and black. On her hands and knees, her hair falling over her face, tears she didn't remember shedding on her cheeks.

She was here, but she wasn't. She simply wasn't. And, at the same time, she was.

But she didn't know who it was that she was.

Was she the Clara who lived a deprived life of poverty and depression, was scorned by the community and resented by the outcasts, who died of pneumonia and whose body lay forgotten on the streets of 16th century London?

Was she the Clara who had grown up too quickly from the loss of both parents as a toddler, wading through the years to become part of the Inter-galactic Union, and eventually married the short blonde boy who once bought her a coffee?

Was she the Clara whose mother wanted her to become a seamstress in 18th century Paris, who looked up at the stars and wanted nothing but to visit them, and then defied her family and her name to move to Strasbourg and become a teacher?

Was she the Clara who strived as hard as she could to get out into space, to explore the worlds, and found herself a Junior Entertainment Manager on the Starship Alaska, who crash landed on the Dalek Asylum and sacrificed herself to rid the universe of its psychotic inhabitants?

Or was she the Clara of 21st century England, who lost her mother at 16 and lost her heart to a weakened family who had lost just the same, who found a crazed monk on her doorstep and ran away to the stars?

She didn't know.

But there was something there, something that was always there. No matter the time, nor place, nor person, that something, or someone, was there. She could see him clearly, though her own self was a haze. She knew his face, though there were many of them, his voice, his words, his story, his name.

The Doctor.

_I have to save him. I have to save the Doctor._

Why? Why did she have to save him?

Because he was brilliant, a god of a man, an amazing, great, powerful man. And she knew him. She knew this man.

But she didn't know herself.

And she didn't know where she was, either. A swirling black, gold, dust and smoke and shapes and shadows. Shouts and songs and whispers and winds. Where was she? Who was she? Who was Clara? Did she exist?

"Doctor? _Doctor?"_

Nothing echoed back but her own fearful voice.

Fear and panic was rising in a stabbing wave in her chest. The infinite, dark world she was crouching in was pressing in on her and rising high around her at the same time.

A sob choked from her throat, "Please, please, I don't know where I am!"

_Or who. _She knew she was Clara, Clara Oswald, but she was also a thousand other names. A Victorian governess who was really a barmaid, a psychology student in 22nd century Australia, a young servant of a Medieval king, a medic out on the front lines in the First World War, a traveller on one of the first interstellar ships piloted by the human race, and a thousand other people with a thousand other lives and a thousand other stories.

Who was she? Where was she?

She didn't know.

And it scared her more than anything.

"Clara."

A voice. A voice. The Doctor's voice.

_The Doctor._

The sound lent hope to her heavy, clouded heart and order to her scattered mind, but it also made dread collect as a tangible thing in her chest, weighing her, something real in all this _nothing_.

_Doctor?_

"You can hear me. I know you can."

Yes. That, what was him. That was..._the Doctor._

Where was he?

"I can't see you," Clara managed.

"I'm everywhere. You're inside my time stream. Everything around you is me."

A figure ran past, shadowed, white haired, and somehow she knew. It was him. It was the Doctor. And then more, more silhouettes, more faces. And she recognised them. She'd seen them all before.

Familiar voices came calling, whispering, shouting, all the Doctor's. All his.

"I can see you. All your different faces are here."

A man in a coat of a thousand colours, another with a swirl of blonde hair, another in a black leather jacket.

"Those are my ghosts, my past," the Doctor, her Doctor's words echoed eerily. "Every good day, every bad day."

There was a crack, a boom of something like thunder, but it wasn't. The fog of everything around her shook, screams tearing holes through it. One scream rose above the others. It was the Doctor's.

"What's wrong? What's happening?"

"I'm inside my own time stream. it's collapsing in on itself."

"Well get out then!" she yelled. She wasn't going to let him die now, she wasn't going to let him destroy himself now. Not after all she had done. Not after saving him so many times.

"Not until I've got you."

_You don't need me. Who am I, for you to need?_

"I don't even know who I am," she mumbled into the swirling gold air, although who was this 'she' to mumble? Who was this Clara?

"You're my impossible girl."

And who is that? Whoever it is, she is not her. She is not his impossible girl, she is not Clara Oswald.

She doesn't know who Clara Oswald is.

"I'm sending you something. Not from my past, from yours."

Everything was blurring out, the dirt under her hands, the people lurking in the shadows, all fading into something darker. She was frightened, really frightened now.

And she looked up, fluttering down from somewhere above was a leaf. A golden red leaf. Her leaf. Her mother's leaf. Clara Oswald's leaf. It was clear, she could see it in all the waves of the past. And the future.

"This is you, Clara. Everything you are or will be. Take it."

She caught it, careful not to crumple it into nothing. As if to do so was to crumple herself into nothing. Perhaps it was.

"You blew into the world on this leaf. Hold tight. It will take you home."

She looked around, she wanted to cry, she wanted to lie down and sob herself into nonexistence. Who was she? Where was she? Why was she?

"Clara, Clara, come on!"

Was it real?

"Come up to me now. You can do it, I know you can."

She turned to the voice, the same but somehow different, and he was there. He was there. Safe. He was there. But was she?

"How?"

"Because it's impossible and you're my impossible girl! How many times have you saved me, Clara? Just this once, just for the hell of it, let me save you!"

Real? Real? Real?

She stepped forward. Oh, she hoped he was real. Oh, she wanted to go home.

"You have to trust me, Clara, I'm real. Just one more step!"

And he was there. He was real.

She threw herself into his arms, she needed something to hold into, if not herself. He was real. He was real.

"Clara! My Clara!"

His arms were tight around her too, safe, warm, home.

_My Clara._

Was she delusional?

Of course she was.

But she wanted nothing more than to lie down against his warm chest, bury her face in his coat, and sleep.

And just like that the Doctor stiffened, looking at something behind her. When Clara looked up at him, there was very real fear in his eyes.

She turned, stayed pressed to his side, and he kept his arm around her. She felt that if she moved just a step or two away, she would be swallowed by the nothing. Nonexistent.

And there was a man, standing with his back to them.

"Who's that?"

"Never mind. Let's get back," the Doctor whispered, quietly, urgently.

But there was only one person that man could be. Who was it?

"Who is he?"

"He's me. There's only me here, that's the point. Now _let's get back."_

"But I never saw that one. I saw all of you. Eleven faces. All of them you."

"I said he was me. I never said he was the Doctor."

"But I don't understand."

"My name, my _real_ name...that is not the point. The name I chose is the Doctor. The name you choose, it's like- it's like a promise you make. He's the one who broke the promise."

She looked at him, standing tall and grey and black in all the gold and void.

Something pounded in her head, several things, everything. Everything throbbing, screaming at her.

And there was this man.

And there was the Doctor.

And there was Clara. Who was Clara?

Not her, was it? Was it her?

Was it...

Her?

•••

THE DOCTOR

He could have kissed her.

He really could have kissed her, in the ecstatic relief he was feeling. Clara was right here. Not dead. He'd saved her. He _had_.

"Clara? Clara! Clara!"

She fell against him, eyelids weighing shut. He caught her before she could fall further, lifted her into his arms she was warm, light. He pulled her against his chest, he wouldn't let go. Not for anything. Not even for the man who stood before them.

"He is my secret," he said, almost to himself, sort of to the unconscious Clara, mostly to the man himself.

"What I did, I did without choice."

"I know."

"In the name of peace and sanity."

_"But not in the name of the Doctor."_

And he turned, with Clara held against him, suddenly not caring about the man he was leaving behind him, or where he was. Here was Clara, /Clara/, _safe_.

He could have kissed her.

In ecstatic relief, however. Nothing more, of course. Nothing more.

But, of that, he really wasn't sure.


	4. Lakehouse

A/N hi guys! Thanks for reviewing all of you. It seriously brightness my sometimes dull and dreary days. This one is an AU, where they are both human and the Doctor is about the same age as he looks. The song is Lakehouse by Of Monsters and Men. Sorry. I just love them.

Also, I'm thinking of changing my pen name? I don't know, my current one is based on my favourite book, but it seems a bit boring...ugh. I want something doctor who related I think. Ugh. I don't know. Anyway, no one wants to listen to me and my rambling. Enjoy :)

•••

_Oh, I miss the comfort of this house.  
__Where we are, where we are.  
__Where we are, where we are._

_The floor under our feet whispers out,  
__"Come on in, come on in, where it all begins."_

_Can you chase this fire away?_

_The tallest man I've ever seen afloat,  
__On a boat, on a boat.  
__On a boat, on a boat._

_He keeps his only son close by.  
__In a bag, in a bag.  
__In a bag on his back._

_Can you chase this fire away?_

_Can you chase this fire away?_

_In the fire we sleep all day_

_In the fire we sleep all day_

_Where we are, where we are_

_Where we are, where we are_

_Where we are, where we are_

_Where we are, where we are_

_Where we are, where we are_

_Can you chase the fire away?_

_Can you chase the fire away?_

_In the fire we sleep all day_

_In the fire we sleep all day_

•••

The Doctor's house was a big old thing. A classic two-storey weatherboard, it stood, creaking and groaning, in the middle of a huge mess of a garden which stretched out for hundreds of metres around before it reached the property borderline.

The house was cracked and spiderwebbed, floorboards worn dark in the path of all its previous inhabitants, and orchestrated a symphony of moans and protestations whenever the slightest wind blew through its doors. The garden could previously have been quite well-kept, Clara thought the Doctor's father had been a gardener, in fact. But now the once carefully trimmed hedges and well watered bulbs had seeded among each other, other plants she could not describe nor name had settled in the roots of the wrinkled old oaks, and the whole thing was a maze of life and death alike.

There was even a clear, fish-glistening lake nestled in this botanical labyrinth, or really more of a large pond. On a good night, you could see the moon and stars reflected on its surface.

The house itself boasted room upon room upon room. A library, two sprawling studies, five luxurious bedrooms with ensuites to match, one and a half kitchens, and more that had no use nor purpose at all that she knew of.

Impossible things stood on forgotten shelves. Books that told stories to capture your heart rested on dusty coffee tables. Maps, of places that didn't exist now but might have in the past or might do sometime in the future, were rolled up behind wardrobes. Ancient looking stone artifacts were stuck under couches to compensate for that missing fourth leg. Items of furniture that could have existed from the beginning of time and survived well until the end of it crouched in shadowy corners. Oddiments of cultures and countries from all corners of the world, and some that crossed over those lines, sat in every little nook and cranny, gathering dust and time.

Also, the entire exterior of the house was painted a very particular shade of blue.

Clara had once asked him why it was that colour, and he had answered that usually people asked him that incredulously, not curiously. He had gone on to say, in a low voice, that it was on the ten year anniversary of his parents' deaths that he had done it. She had hurriedly apologised, of course, not having known at that point of the Doctor's familiar history with death.

But he had waved her off, explaining that it was because the colour looked like the sky at dusk, when you thought you could look up and see into whole other worlds. That it was deep and swallowing, the kind of colour that could consume you in unknown emotion. It was a longing colour, a wishing colour, a hoping colour, a dreaming colour. It was sadness, and grief, and sorrow so penetrating it was like a void inside you. It was a promise of adventure, of things to be discovered in the peaceful blue. It was the sea and the sky and whales with their mournful songs. It was loss and regret and a resentment of hate that was always there, never fading, always constant. It was the blue of thoughts, the whispers in minds, the calling in souls.

It was also, he'd added, eyes twinkling, his favourite colour.

One particular evening in a smattering of evenings just like it, Clara parked her rickety three-door car by the path that led up to the house. The Doctor didn't like such things taking up space in the driveway, and she agreed. There was something quite special about sitting on the veranda of that old house, with the company of naught but herself and her unforgettable friend, not a sound but the flitter of night birds, not a light but the pinpricks of stars, and not a man-made thing in sight, but for the house, which strictly did not count.

The Doctor loved his house, it had been owned by his parents, his grand-parents, his great-grandparents, and probably even further back. The house was everything to him. He'd even named it; the TARDIS. Time and Relative Dimension in Space. When asked, he'd said he'd named it that because it was like another world, the house, another dimension in which time and space was nothing and everything and all of the universe was possible. He talked like that a lot.

Clara began up the gravel path that wound, a clear line in all the chaos, up to the front steps. The front lights of the house were on, and the swinging bench that stood on the front veranda tipping slowly back and forth with regular creaks. As she got closer, she could see clearly the man who sat on the bench, and the two curls of steam issuing from respective mugs on the table in front of him. She smiled- he had been waiting for her.

She skipped up the front steps- deep blue, of course- making sure to hop over the third one. It had collapsed under her feet one time, even though she was much smaller and lighter than the Doctor and most other people who entered the house. He seemed to see the TARDIS as a living thing, and, if it was, Clara was convinced it didn't like her.

The Doctor gave her a smile and a mug of tea- English Breakfast, no milk, one and a half sugars- and she took both happily, taking a seat beside him on the swinging bench. He stirred his own tea distractedly, munching on a biscuit.

"Had a good day?" she asked, though she had a hunch that he hadn't.

"Mmm." Okay, not a good day then. Usually he would launch into a dramatic and detailed explanation of all the just as eccentric and strange people as him who he had met that day, and all the interesting things he had done. The Doctor didn't strictly have an occupation, he mostly did things around the place. He was a genius, truly, and sometimes even government organisations hired him to solve one problem or another of theirs, or he took a plane to the Amazon on a whim to find a previously unknown species of beetle, or he went and stopped some humanitarian injustice all on his own with just his quick mind and a couple of his invented tools. Clara was pretty sure he had broken the law dozens of times, all in the name of these remarkable exploits, but the higher authorities saw fit to overlook them due to his being both cleverer and more strong-minded than anyone, and a valuable asset to them.

"How was work?" he questioned, still intent on his tea (cream and six sugars, of course).

Ugh. Boring question. Almost as boring as work itself. It was a temporary job, really, that she had taken after the kids she was looking after had grown too old. She wanted to travel, do amazing things like the Doctor did every day. But she was far from rich, and stuck in a job at the town bookshop. Yes, the boring, cliche bookshop job. There was one plus side though, being that she got free books once in a blue moon.

"Same as always," she replied, taking another sip of tea. He nodded, scuffing his shoes against the veranda, sending the seat swinging again.

He didn't say anything else. That was unlike him. Where were the jokes, the childlike exclamations of pride and wonder? Where was the normal Doctor?

"You miss them," she observed, immediately regretting the words once they had slipped her lips. Mention of the Doctor's parents, or River, or Amy and Rory, was her own unspoken taboo.

He surprised her by actually answering. "I always miss them."

"So do I," Clara sighed, meaning her own mother. "I can't imagine what you feel."

He kicked the table, jolting the bench into a dizzying movement.

"Sometimes," he murmured. "Sometimes...I wonder why I'm here."

Clara looked at him, looking up at the stars. She knew the Doctor, and could see that this wasn't some shrouded pondering of suicide, or anything of the like. This was something different, a true, heartfelt wondering.

"Why you're here?"

"Why _you're_ here. Why _we're_ here. Why...why _they_ were here. Why they're not, anymore. Why anyone is here...simply, why."

"Well...well," she followed his gaze up to the sky. "Depends what you mean. Spiritually? Physically? Philosophically? Emotionally?"

"All of them, I suppose. Or none of them. Just...don't worry. I'm just a mad man and his thoughts."

She was used to these answerless questions now, they were a main characteristic of the Doctor as she had come to know him. She responded likewise, "Well, why do you wear bow ties? Why did you paint the TARDIS blue? Why do you passionately hate yoghurt?"

He smiled a little at this. "Clever one, you are."

"You wanna know why _I'm_ here?"

"Yes. Enlighten me."

"Hmm..." she pretended to think about it, but there were a few things she would rather not say. Not now, at least. "So many little things. How about...tea! Tea, with no milk and one and a half sugars!" She decided he needed some humour more than anything.

He smiled properly now. "And jammy dodgers!" he took one from the table and took a bite.

"Don't forget to mention those little chocolates with caramel inside. They're my favourite. Little things like that." She was sort of joking now.

"And Crunchie bars! Best invention in the history of mankind."

"The strawberry gelato from that place next to the post office. Heaven," she mused.

"My home made vegetarian omelettes."

"Beef Wellington and gravy."

"Fish fingers and custard!"

She smirked. "Pork vindaloo."

"White chocolate and raspberry muffin tops. Not the bottom bits. Those are yuck."

"Hot chocolate and marshmallows at dusk when it's storming."

"Cereal and hot fudge at midnight in winter."

"Waking up early in spring when the birds sing through your window."

"Really strong wind in a storm that makes all the windows shake and rattles the foundations."

"Watching an entire tv series alone in one sitting because there's no one to stop you."

"Smart-mouthing the leader of the British Intelligence and not getting arrested."

"Finishing a really good book at three in the morning."

"Finding a lost map of the Himalayas from the fourth century behind the kitchen fridge."

"Running in the rain without an umbrella."

"Playing the organ, the trumpet, the cello and the accordion all at the same time. Very badly."

"Making someone laugh so hard they can't stop."

"Calling the Prime Minister a log-headed clotpole for his ignorant use of new military technology."

"Planning out all the places and towns you want to travel to some day."

"Traveling wherever you want, whenever you want."

"Wishing you could." _Damn. Shut up._

He's not going to travel with you, you know that, you've always known that. You have a life here. He doesn't have space for anyone in his.

"Wishing someone would travel with you," he responded quickly, clinking his mug against hers.

_Did he just..._

"Sitting out in the garden in July," she added hurriedly.

"The sound the TARDIS makes when there's thunder."

"Finding a long forgotten book in the back room that no one's ever heard of."

"The jokes in Christmas crackers!"

"The silver coins in Christmas pudding."

"Christmas in general and totality."

"Looking at the stars."

"My TARDIS."

"Drinking tea on the veranda."

"Pondering life."

"Sitting here with..." he started enthusiastically, before mumbling off, nibbling the last of his Jammy Dodger and looking away again.

"Didn't catch that."

"With you. Sitting here with you."

"Oh, I suppose you _do_ enjoy my company."

"Of course I do! You're Clara."

"And here I was thinking you just liked a pretty face. I'm joking," she added, after seeing his expression.

"But-no-you _do_ have a pretty face. I mean, I mean, that's not why I like you, you're also clever and funny and caring and- and curious...and...who said I liked you?"

"You did."

"When?"

"Just then."

It was starting to rain, now, drops pattering on the iron covering that hung over the veranda. Clara tried to convince herself that the Doctor _hadn't_ just said that, said she was funny and pretty and...well, she bit her lip and smiled into her tea anyway. His wide, shocked eyes and stuttering was quite hilarious.

He set down his tea, leaning back on the seat as the rain began to intensify into a pour. She could tell he was trying not to look at her, and not to smile.

She put her mug down beside his, and he took her hand as soon as it was free, swinging it between them. His eyes were darting everywhere, the sky, the roof, his shoes, the tea, his hand, and Clara herself.

_Every little thing._

So she kissed him.

Despite all her fears. Despite all that told this was wrong, it was dangerous, it could not end well.

But she did.

A little thing.

Another little thing.

Corner of the mouth.

As she expected, he jumped in his seat.

"Why'd you do that?!" he spluttered.

"Why'd you paint the TARDIS blue?"

He was still looking at her with complete incredulity, blushing.

She looked back up at the sky, no stars to be seen now. Just clouds. And rain.

She drank the last of her tea, listening to the sky's tears and the Doctor's loud, long breaths.

And then he lifted her hand in his, and softly kissed the back of it. He was smiling now, like it was a game.

Fine. Clara Oswald would never let herself lose a game.

She waited until the rain was an irregular roar, before turning, taking the collar of his coat, and kissing him _properly_.

Of course, he jolted back, arms flailing. It tool a while for him to recover himself, but was it her imagination or was he not just not protesting, but clumsily, tentatively...kissing back?

Next moment, there was a resounding crack from above and a barreling of water, collected from the waterfall of rain, came crashing down upon her head.

The Doctor recoiled, the bench went swinging again, and Clara was nothing but soaked.

"I told you your house doesn't like me!" she said through gritted teeth, blinking away water and looking down at herself in shock.

"Do you want a towel?" the Doctor asked sheepishly.

"No, I want to sit here and catch pneumonia! I think your house is jealous."

"Jealous? What-but..." he leapt up and disappeared inside while Clara glared at the bent metal awning above her, wringing her hair out in the deck.

When he returned with a towel, she snatched it from him and wrapped it around herself, moving across to his dry spot on the seat. "Stupid house," she muttered, angry not just for her saturated state, but also the fact that the deluge had interrupted something she was very much enjoying.

He squeezed onto the bit of dry bench next to her, rubbing her arms. Well, at least that felt nice.

"Is that what you meant?" he said suddenly.

"What?" she snapped, still rather irritated.

"About the things you live for. Was that you meant?"

"What do you mean?"

"I think it was."

"You think what was?" now she was really annoyed with him and his cryptic questions and answers.

"The little things." His eyes were sparkling.

"Maybe."

He smiled, brushed the strands of wet hair from her forehead. "Maybe."

And then the awning groaned even louder than before, and the rest of the panel came lose from its fixing, sending a lake full of water down upon both of them.

•••

A/N i dont know what i just wrote...meh. if you leave a review I will scream and jump up and down on the bus in public and not care what weird looks people give me.


	5. Little Talks

**A/N hi guys! So, this is a sort of sequel to my last thing. It's set in the same alternate universe, just about, say... 35/40 years later. I may do more oneshots set in the same universe later. To tell the truth, I wasn't even intending on writing something like the following. I really really wasn't. I said to myself, I said, /stop writing this stuff. Its not healthy. Its not fun. It makes you sad and antisocial. This is supposed to be a fluffy little collection to help people through the hiatus. Stop./**

**I don't listen to myself. Also, I listened to the song and could not stop myself. **

**Important note, as you may have noticed, I HAVE CHANGED MY PENNAME. I AM REDAUGUST102. DON'T WORRY. IM STILL ME. JUST A DIFFERENT NAME. OKAY? OKAY. **

**I'm still rather fond of redaugust, actually, but I like this one better. More doctor who-ey. :) anyway moving on no one cares...**

**Song is Little Talks by Of Monsters and Men. Yes. Another Monsters song. I know. Sorry. I'll stop and go onto other artists. I really will. But this is just too perfect. **

**WARNING: SWEARING IS PRESENT IN THIS CHAPTER. SORRY IT WAS UNAVOIDABLE. **

•••

_I don't like walking around this old and empty house  
__So hold my hand, I'll walk with you, my dear  
__The stairs creak as you sleep, it's keeping me awake  
__It's the house telling you to close your eyes.  
__And some days I can't even trust myself  
__It's killing me to see you this way._

_'Cause though the truth may vary  
__This ship will carry our bodies safe to shore._  


_There's an old voice in my head that's holding me back  
__Well tell her that I miss our little talks  
__Soon it will be over and buried with our past  
__We used to play outside when we were young  
__And full of life and full of love._

_Some days I don't know if I am wrong or right  
__Your mind is playing tricks on you, my dear._

_'Cause though the truth may vary  
__This ship will carry our bodies safe to shore._

_Don't listen to a word I say  
__The screams all sound the same._

_____You're gone, gone, gone away  
__I watched you disappear  
__All that's left is the ghost of you._

_Now we're torn, torn, torn apart,  
__There's nothing we can do  
__Just let me go we'll meet again soon_

_Now wait, wait, wait for me  
__Please hang around  
__I'll see you when I fall asleep._

_Don't listen to a word I say  
__The screams all sound the same_

_Though the truth may vary_

_This ship will carry our bodies safe to shore. _

•••

Life is nothing now. Life was always nothing. Life has never been, nor ever will, be anything but nothing.

I know that now. In death, I know.

Yes, I died.

I died many months ago.

Not in the traditional sense of the word, of course. My heart still beats. My blood still flows. My mind still thinks.

That's the problem, I think. I'm only half-dead. The other half, the half that matters, died that sunny August day. The other half died with you.

You're dead.

You died.

You left me alone.

That word, _died_, is one I find myself saying a lot these days. Whenever someone asks me why I never smile, why I carry an old bow tie in my pocket, why I live in that big blue house all on my own.

I have to tell them, then. I tell them that you died.

They flinch, stiffen, wince. As if the word is taboo, something no one should ever say. Especially not me, being the one who loves you. They want me to say something else, 'passed away' or 'moved on' or, simply, 'gone'. But that implies that you've gone somewhere. That there is somewhere to go to, after death. Is there? Could you tell me? And if there is, you wouldn't go there without me.

I just tell them you died. Those other phrases mean nothing.

They look down at the floor, then, at their shoes, or they look right into my eyes, and they say sorry. But why should they be sorry? They didn't put a knife through your heart. Malaria did.

Of course it was something like that. We just had to run off to Africa, just had to go careening through an untouched stretch of forest and savannah, the first people to explore it in decades. That's who you said we were. Decades is a long time. But not long enough to warrant the result.

Why did I so eagerly accompany you there? Travel still held that same wonder for me, then. I still loved the world, all for its flaws. But I should have known. I should have sensed it. I should have told you to stay home and stay put, I should have known.

But no one can ever know things like that.

You were so desperate to go there, we hadn't travelled anywhere properly in months. We never discussed it with each other, although we should have, but our adventures were getting less frequent, less demanding, and a little less wondrous. We both tried to ignore it, but we were getting old.

I could see it in the silver growing at the roots of your hair, like a disease slowly claiming your youth. I could see it in the deepening lines around your eyes, the memories of a thousand laughs and a thousand tears. I could see it in your slowing gait, the way you became unable to walk or run too far, too long.

We didn't consciously lessen our travelling, we didn't one day sit down and decide to stay in one spot for a while. It just sort of crept in, took root, sprouted and snared us though we struggled. It was a monster, and it was taking us both even before you died. A monster called time.

You grew restless, depressed, angry, mad. One day you would be content to live and love with me in that big old house, the other you would be cursing your failing joints and shouting at the sky. I missed it too, I really did. Travelling was all I wanted, all I wanted and you. And I couldn't live as well without it, as if ordinary life was too dull, too boring, too simple. But it wasn't, really. Not for the other six billion people on earth.

Just for us, who had seen and lived the magnificent and the impossible.

If I missed our adventures, then you _needed_ them. They kept you alive, they kept your heart pounding, they kept you from remembering. And so you grew old, and resentful, and regretful, and all much too quickly. Even then, the ghost was beginning to take hold of you. You couldn't help remembering when there was nothing to help you forget. Except me. There was always me.

But I wasn't enough.

You loved me, I know you did. And I loved you just as much. But as time took its toll, we lost our life. We lost our joy. We lost our awe at the world. We started to see the universe in a very different light.

And then you'd had enough. You booked a plane to Africa, and we were off without question. Those few weeks there were happy again. Our last adventure. We saw hope, together, again.

And Malaria it was. Your death sentence. Although we would never have thought it back then. Why would we? It's treatable, especially in our modern hospitals. And rarely takes a strong- however old and greying- man so easily and so simply.

Apparently there is something else that makes you rare.

Why wasn't I the one, why did it have to be you?

When the fever started, I booked the plane home straight away. You protested, I was adamant, you gave in. But the few days of difference my stubbornness made didn't stop you from dying.

The night after we got back, you were almost back to your old self. Your temperature had normalised, no more dizziness or vomiting or shivering. I thought you were better, that it was just a bad three-day flu.

But then it attacked a second time. We didn't know what it was then, but we soon would. Plasmodium falciparum, the doctors told us. A type of malaria.

The fatal kind.

I don't remember going to the hospital, I don't remember those days I spent sleeping in the chair beside your bed, sneaking you store-bought chocolate pudding when the nurses weren't looking. I don't remember the doctor diagnosing you, nor the talks about treatment, or cure, or cost. I don't remember anything in that blur of floor-cleaner smell and sterilised white tiles but your pale, clammy hands and your sunken face.

Some days I would walk into your room, see you lying with your eyes closed, and think you were already dead.

Some days I would sneakily insult everyone within sight; nurses, doctors, patients, even you. Some days I would stare at your limp form under all those sheets and cry without noise. Some days I would yell and scream, lashing out at anyone who looked even remotely official, shouting in their ears about how you weren't getting better, and this was the 21st century England not the bloody dark ages so _why hadn't they cured you?_

At least that is what everyone tells me. I don't remember it. I wish I did. I wish I could remember the last days of your life.

•••

I still don't get it, you know. I still don't understand. Malaria? No, that's a myth. Almost never fatal, and only then when not treated. Right?

Wrong.

It's probably just the fact that you, amazing you, incredible you, beautiful, impossible you, the man who rebuilds flooded Zimbabwean villages with his crazy inventions, who decides to sail off to Easter Island in the dead of night, who spins me round his creaky old house and has the nerve to tell me that I'm more beautiful than any of the places he's visited. The fact that eccentric, childlike, sad, old _you_ were killed by a mosquito.

_A._

_Fucking. _

_Bug._

You would have thought it was funny, if you could have managed any emotion other than that constant deranged fatigue. For my sake, you would have laughed.

•••

Although I cannot call to mind many details of those few days of torment while you lay in the hospital, the last grasp for the dying, I remember those last hours so perfectly it shames me. Sometimes when I think of you, I think of that day first, before all the other ones. Before all the good ones.

I can't help it.

I remember blearily rubbing my eyes from sleep, stretching out of the hard chair I had been curled up in for the night. The nurse had told me to go home, she had insisted quite firmly. I think she saw in my eyes that I would rather knock her unconscious and sleep in the storage cupboard than go home, though, and she eventually caved.

I remember wincing at the aches in my joints, smoothing my hair down a little but not really caring for my appearance. I avoided looking at your bed for a long time, and I'm still not exactly sure why. Maybe it was the long, science-y talk the doctor had given me the night before, full of apologies and five syllable words. They stopped trying to dumb it down when your condition grew worse, as though if I didn't understand what they were talking about then I wouldn't be worried. But I've lived with you for thirty years, I worked out enough to know how precarious a state you were in.

I looked at the ceiling first, studying the little patches of god-knows-what as I took two little steps towards you. Then I stood, listening to the rising murmur as everyone started coming into work, the sound of other patients waking up floating through the walls.

I swallowed the pressing lump of fear in my throat.

I looked down.

You looked dead. You looked so dreadfully dead. But I knew you weren't. I knew you couldn't be.

Your once young, bright face was wrinkled and ever so white. Your once rich brown coif of hair was speckled with silver, lying flat against your skin. Your once silly purple coat and bow tie was replaced by a crisp white hospital gown. You weren't you any longer.

Something like a ghost.

Most times you could barely talk to me, your thoughts in that haze of drugs and your mind in the vice of the sickness. You said some things, jumbled words and phrases that usually made no sense. I talked back to you anyway. I hope you understood what I was saying.

That day, you said some things to me. An hour or so after I woke, when the hospital staff began to rush and flutter about, checking your vitals and noting your progress. Their faces were grim. They didn't talk to me much, or they didn't say anything that I heard, anyway.

You started to stir, then. You moved your head an inch or two, your fingers twitched, your eyelids fluttered, and my heart leapt.

But then I saw your eyes, and I knew that it still wasn't you lying there under those sheets. They were yellow and bloodshot, the skin around them was stained with purple. And they just stared. Stared at me. Stared through me.

It wasn't you.

It was a ghost of you.

But I pretended that it wasn't.

I said your name. I think you recognised it. You squinted at me.

I said it again. Doctor.

You mumbled something. It could have been my name. It could have been nothing.

"Are you feeling better?" I asked. I don't know why I asked that. I knew you weren't. I knew. I knew.

A nurse came in. He put a hand on my shoulder. I didn't look at him.

"We're trying," he said. "We're doing all we can."

I didn't speak. _Go away._

"It's one of the worst cases we've ever seen here. Remember that his mental state is deteriorating. He's becoming delusional. But we're trying. I promise, we're trying."

"Fuck off," I said. The first time I'd said anything like that since I was an ignorant teenager. You know that I never swear. You knew. Know. Knew.

I don't know anymore. I didn't know then, I don't know now. I don't know what I don't know, I don't know why I don't know it. I don't know _I don't_ _know_.

He fucked off.

I kept standing there, you sort of looked at me. I took your hand, you sort of wrapped your fingers around mine. I talked to you, you sort of listened.

In the end, I lay down next to you. On top of those scratchy hospital sheets. I was glad we were alone. They'd moved you into isolation just the night before.

I cried. Of course I cried. But I didn't cry from sadness. I was angry. At least I think I was.

Isn't it strange how humanity sees fit to put such defining labels on emotion? I don't know what I felt, but I knew that whatever it was was howling for you.

_One in a million._

And then I felt your hand on my cheek.

I didn't dare to breathe.

You were looking at me through half-lidded eyes. Not _your_ eyes. But close enough. I don't think you knew exactly what you were saying.

"Clara," you murmured, the syllables slurring together. "My...my impossible girl. C...Clara."

I clutched your hand.

"We...we had so many adventures, Clara. We saw so many things. Clara... we helped so many people."

You sounded like a drugged up madman. Which you sort of were.

And then you smiled. And I saw the real you again. For a moment. For a moment I had hope.

"I'm going on another adventure, Clara," you said.

That was the moment the void took root in my chest. That was the moment it started to eat me up. Into nothing.

I brought your fingers to my lips. You were stroking my cheek. Your eyes were still hazy, yellowed, dull.

"Without you, Clara," you frowned, like a sad little child. "Why am I going without you?"

It felt like drowning.

I couldn't answer you.

I wish I had.

"Why can't you come with me, Clara?"

My tears were falling onto your hand.

"Clara? Can't you come?"

I wished you would stop saying my name.

"I don't... don't want to go on an adventure without... my Clara."

It wasn't you who said those words.

If it was really you, you would only have thought them. If it was really you, you would have kissed my forehead and told me it was okay. If it was really you, you would have cried with me. If it was really you, you wouldn't have said those things where I could hear them.

But it wasn't you. So I heard them.

The nurses and doctors streamed in and out of the room, all grim and full of apologies.

They tried to make me leave. Get some air. Think.

I couldn't.

I stood when they forced me, though. I spent hours standing there, still, looking at the you who was not you.

You rarely looked back. And when you did, it was the eyes of a ghost who'd outgrown his years.

It happened in the afternoon.

The sun shone through the window.

•••

I'm still living in your house.

You called it our house, of course. But we both knew it had always been yours. Your big, old, blue TARDIS.

It is so old now. Much too big. And even more blue.

I hear your footsteps on the stairs, sometimes. Late at night. I wait up for you, as I used to when you busied yourself with tools and machines and maps and books to fend off your insomnia. I lie there and wait for you.

You never come.

I know you're not there, I know you're dead. Dead, dead, dead. You're dead. The Doctor is dead. John Smith is dead. Dead, dead, dead.

Dead.

Your house is dead too.

There's no life inside it.

Nothing is as it was.

Not a well loved leather armchair waiting to be nestled upon. Just an old, decaying bit of furniture waiting for the tip.

Not a hand drawn map of the dusty plains of the Sahara, settlements labelled in messy pen, an oasis marked with an urgent arrow and a smiley face. Just a piece of doodled paper with a coffee stain.

Not a priceless jade dragon from imperial China, standing tall and proud and imposing on the top shelf of the bookcase, growling down at all those below. Just a dull knickknack someone probably picked up from the goodwill, taking up space that could be used for something practical.

Not a green-glowing penlike device of your own invention, able to unlock any door, hack any system, that always accompanied you on our travels. Just a silly stick of metal lying on the kitchen counter.

Not a splat of blue paint on the hallway floor, from the time you repaired the door and had the nerve to fling it at me, the one you drew a little smiley face on because you said it looked like a person. Just a stain on cracked floorboards from a passed, sunnier day.

Not a house of hundreds of years, thousands of memories. Not a house of kisses and laughs and shouts and tears. Not a house of the smell of soufflé wafting from the oven, the sound of clinking and clanking of metal and wires as you tinkered, the warmth of your chest at night, the feeling of home. Not a house.

A cracked and teetering coffin, one wind gust away from desolation, cold and old and dusty and sad.

Whenever the door slams shut, it sounds like another nail in the wood.

Whenever the rain patters on the roof, it sounds like shovelfuls of dirt being cast down on top of me.

When there is silence, it sounds like the voices of death.

This is my life now. Death. The opposite of things, the contrast of being that somehow is my everything.

Time has claimed you.

As it must.

I can feel it stalking me.

It waits behind every corner, lives under these floorboards, in the peeling blue paint of your house.

Breathes in the soft fabric of the tattered bowtie I clutch in my pocket wherever I go.

Skips in the sounds of laughter of others who do not yet know what I do, what they must soon enough know.

Groans in the creak of the swinging bench, waiting for us under the stars.

Whispers in the scent of the flowers and the trees that clamber, so wild and free, up to your house.

Beats in the chill and the cold of this house, and everything that's missing.

Time.

I feel it every second.

I took every clock we own and hung it in our room. All sixty six of them. They didn't all fit on the walls. Some are under the bed. In the drawers. On the ceiling. One is under my pillow. Its sound ticks on into my dreams.

I hear them ticking now.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

My time.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Of time.

As it did for you, it will do for me.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

I can only hope it will not delay.

Tick.

Tick.

A/N this was an ACCIDENT

Thank you for all the reviews everyone by the way.

ACCIDENT


	6. Demons

A/N Special thanks today goes to my guest reviewers! Because I cannot reply to you and I love you anyway. Thanks everyone.

I did have a much fluffier, happier kind of thing lined up...but I got writer's block and wrote this instead. Sorry. I hope you all are nice enough to leave a review (it makes me so FRICKING HAPPY). By the way, remember when I said I'd go crazy on the bus reading your reviews? Well, I did. I got all choked up and happy and smiley and this old guy next to me asked me if I was okay. Which was awkward.

moving on, the song for today is Demons by Imagine Dragons. Go look it up on YouTube because AMAZINGNESS. Also WARNING: DARK!DOCTOR.

EDIT- CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE NEW 50TH TRAILER? IVE WATCHED IT A HUNDRED TIMES AND THERE'S SO MUCH IN THAT THING LIKE WOOOAH. ALSO IT'S THE FIRST NEW FOOTAGE SINCE TNOTD SO IM FREAKING OUT!

•••

_When the days are cold_  
_And the cards all fold_  
_And the saints we see_  
_Are all made of gold_

_When your dreams all fail_  
_And the ones we hail_  
_Are the worst of all_  
_And the blood's run stale_

_I wanna hide the truth_  
_I wanna shelter you_  
_But with the beast inside_  
_There's nowhere we can hide_

_No matter what we breed_  
_We still are made of greed_  
_This is my kingdom come_  
_This is my kingdom come_

_When you feel my heat_  
_Look into my eyes_  
_It's where my demons hide_  
_It's where my demons hide_  
_Don't get too close_  
_It's dark inside_  
_It's where my demons hide_  
_It's where my demons hide_

_Curtain's call_  
_Is the last of all_  
_When the lights fade out_  
_All the sinners crawl_

_So they dug your grave_  
_And the masquerade_  
_Will come calling out_  
_At the mess you've made_

_Don't wanna let you down_  
_But I am hell bound_  
_Though this is all for you_  
_Don't wanna hide the truth_

_No matter what we breed_  
_We still are made of greed_  
_This is my kingdom come_  
_This is my kingdom come_

_When you feel my heat_  
_Look into my eyes_  
_It's where my demons hide_  
_It's where my demons hide_  
_Don't get too close_  
_It's dark inside_  
_It's where my demons hide_  
_It's where my demons hide_

_They say it's what you make_  
_I say it's up to fate_  
_It's woven in my soul_  
_I need to let you go_

_Your eyes, they shine so bright_  
_I wanna save that light_  
_I can't escape this now_  
_Unless you show me how_

_When you feel my heat_  
_Look into my eyes_  
_It's where my demons hide_  
_It's where my demons hide_  
_Don't get too close_  
_It's dark inside_  
_It's where my demons hide_  
_It's where my demons hide_

_•••_

_It came in an instant._

_The fires._

_The deaths._

_The screams._

_It is still here. I am still here. Just moments later._

_Moments._

_I'm living in each one. So slow. Yet so quick._

_Moments._

_Who can tell which one will be the last?_

_I ran. I ran from my home. I ran here. To the only place I could. I ran alone._

_I clutch my hands into the long red grass, pressing my body into the ground and curling my arms around it. I can feel it. Coming._

_The trees of the Grove of Ways shake their burning silver leaves around me, whispering harshly, shouting under their breath, screaming without passion. In between that urgent rustling and the beating of my hearts, I hear other things._

_Shouts. Cries. Whispers._

_Roars. Cracks. Thunder._

_But, mostly, I hear screams._

_So_

_Many_

_Screams._

_And then it is almost upon me._

_This burning._

_This burning of everything. Anything. All things._

_Gallifrey._

_Fallen._

_Just as was said._

_The Doctor._

_That's the name they told us._

_The Doctor._

_The one who will bring about the end of the Time Lord Empire. Murdering billions. In innocent blood._

_I can hear children screeching in pain._

_And it is_

_here._

_My body shudders with pain, the feeling vibrating through my very bones._

_I am angry._

_I am furious._

_I am sad._

_I am sorry._

_I am lost._

_We are all lost._

_It burns._

_Dear Rassilon, it burns._

_Something raw, wild and unrestrained tears from my throat,_

_A tangible thing, it seems. More tangible than anything else. More real than the grass and the ground and the trees and the leaves. More real than the roar and the screams and the whispers and my hearts. As if the sound could coalesce and tear through the air, before screaming through my chest and stopping my heart._

_But my heart is stopping anyway._

_My being pulses with pain, scraping and screeching through my veins. This pain, this anger, this feeling is all I am._

_Lost. We are lost. We are dead._

_The Doctor._

_I keep screaming._

_The pain._

_The injustice._

_The hate._

_All those people. People I loved. Places I loved. This planet and its Gallifreyans._

_Gone._

_The Doctor._

_And I know it as I yell, as I let forth the pain as the only thing I can physically sense, for everything else no longer exists. This scream is slowly killing my old soul, torturing it before it disappears in all this agony._

_My soul, or whatever may pass for such a thing, is dying. With my people. With my friends. With my loves. With the whispering red grasses. With the searing silver trees. With the shining world of the seven systems, and with its own old children._

_I can't stop it. But I know._

_And the scream will take up place in that empty spot that my soul is leaving behind. I will become the pain, agony, anger, grief and raw, untamed power that this scream is._

_There is only one name._

_The Doctor._

_The Doctor._

_The Doctor._

_I helped him once, I think._

_Perhaps I should not have done._

_Perhaps I-_

_And then the scream is me._

_And I am the scream._

_And the scream is everything._

_And there is nothing else left_.

•••

Clara jolted violently out of sleep...or was it nightmare? or memory? or hell?

All three?

She was breathing heavily, her hair was plastered to her forehead in a cold slick of sweat. She clutched her fists into the tangled sheets, thankful at least for the temporary relief from her nightmares. Except the nightmares usually stayed with her in her waking hours, too.

But her dreams...that was when those other lives felt _real_. When she was awake, they were just stories. When asleep, they were her _life_.

Living, dying.

Again and again.

With the Doctor.

Always him.

Always different.

But she always died.

And it was always, always painful.

Perhaps not physical pain, not every time, but death took great tolls on the human consciousness.

And it _hurt_.

All those lives, she had grown attached to one person or another. There was so much to remember, so much joy and grief and love and loss. It was easier to just ignore it, but there were more than a few things she had to face.

Clara blinked into the dark, pulling herself out of the bed. She was usually a vaguely tidy person, but now clothes, blankets, plates and other assortments were strewn across the room, and she didn't particularly care to clear them up. The miscellaneous debris she had collected here from her days- or weeks now, was it?- living on the TARDIS held no prominence in her mind. Because her mind had too many other things to worry about.

Fumbling for the light switch, Clara pulled on a long coat over her pajamas, combing her fingers briefly through her hair. She had begun to neglect her appearance lately, and her days had been filled with either sleeping, wandering of the TARDIS corridors, or reading in the library. She did these things not because she particularly wished too, she would much rather be at home, in a familiar place, or discovering some distant planet. No, it was because, if she did not, she would probably go insane.

Though, seeing what she was about to do, perhaps she already was.

Clara pushed open the door and stepped out into the corridor. The TARDIS had given her a room just outside the console room, and, though she was surprised that the old box was being nice to her for once, she was grateful for that.

She could hear the clinking and clanking of the Doctor's tinkering in the TARDIS' inner workings, and took the steps to the lower level, where she saw him standing and fiddling with some loose wires.

She didn't say anything for a moment. Started to reconsider. What was she going to say to him?

But then a stray cry of some tortured soul from her previous dream cut through these doubts. And she could no longer stop herself.

"Doctor," she said quietly.

He looked around at her. "Clara! You're up!" He squinted. "Not so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed though."

She nodded. "I need to talk to you."

She thought she saw his eyes flicker- in uncertainty, maybe?- before he replied, "Of course. Need to sort out all those memories in your head, eh?"

She didn't answer him for a minute. There was a lot more than simply memories that she needed to sort out.

She took a breath. "I saw you a thousand different times."

"Yes, yes you did."

"A thousand. And...more than a few of those were less than happy."

"Well, you know what they say. That's my life. I grin and bear it, I still live on as the good old Doctor, eh?"

She took a breath.

_The scream is everything._

_And there is nothing else left._

"No. No, you don't."

The Doctor froze a little at this, she got the feeling he hadn't been fully concentrating on her words until now. "What do you mean?"

"I mean you, Doctor..." she hesitated again. Why was she hesitating? Did she, in some secluded corner of her mind, still blindly believe that this man was a truly good person? That he didn't need someone to help change him? No. No, she didn't. "...sometimes you are far from good."

He straightened up slowly.

"I saw all those deaths, Doctor. Those people you killed. Or caused to take their own lives, in your name. Some enemies, some even used to be friends. And so many of them didn't have to die. But you killed them anyway. And, if you didn't kill them, you turned them into monsters. Your foes grew powerful and desperate in their hate and fear of you. Your friends grew old and fierce for your own protection and teachings," she took a breath. She couldn't stop the words now. Everything she had wanted to say to him for the past days and weeks was streaming from her lips, fuelled by those dreams of fire. "Everyone you loved and hated you transformed in the image of yourself."

"Clara..." his voice was low and rumbling, a warning growl. But this man was not a dog. His eyes glowed, radiant. But he was not a god either.

Maybe she should stop now. The look in his eyes was frightening, terrifying in its ferocity and fire. But she had to tell him. None of his friends had ever dared to recognise this dark side of him, and none had ever dared to show it to him.

But she would. She had to. Or he would just go on and on, killing and killing and _killing_.

"You've done good things. You've saved and helped and healed. So many people see you as a god. But...I've lived so many lives, in so many places, and I know. I know that while millions think of you as the saviour of the universe, a light, an angel, millions more people fear you than anything else."

The Doctor had turned away from her, his shoulders hunched over himself. But he was still listening.

"You are not an angel, Doctor, however much you'd like to be."

"Clara, stop this. I tried, I tried, you don't understand. Please stop this," his voice was still low, but this time it was pleading. Desperate. Begging.

"I-I have to tell you, Doctor. I'm the only one who can. I'm the only one to see all this, so I have to tell you. Or...no one will."

"Maybe that's better," he whispered, no longer pleading, but a tight and restrained whisper.

"Listen to me. Please. Or you'll destroy yourself, and the universe with you."

He turned to face her, and his ever changing eyes were darker than ever, but bright in their darkness. Shadows burning brighter than a dying sun, so potent and wild in their rage and ancient fury that she could hardly bear to look upon them.

"Then speak."

This was not the Doctor she knew. This was not the man who drove her on a motorbike through London to get breakfast, took her to a sinking submarine that should have been Vegas, hunted for ghosts with an enthusiastic grin, or risked everything to save her from himself at Trenzalore. This was not even the man she had saved at the dalek asylum, or who had offered to take her with him across time in Victorian London, or any of the other Doctors she had seen and saved a thousand times.

This Doctor was new.

So she spoke, not because she wished to, but because she had to.

"Doctor," she said slowly, plainly, choosing the words she knew would wound him the most, "You are called an angel. And you are. But you know, as I do, that deep inside you is the greatest demon time has ever seen."

There was a screaming silence for a minute or two. Until he spoke.

"You're right."

"I'm-I'm what?" she hadn't expected him to agree. She'd thought he would deny it, or at least ignore her, perhaps. She'd thought she would need more than her words to show the Doctor himself in his entirety.

"I said you're right," he repeated, and the rumbling tome of his voice caused more fear than she had ever before experienced to gather in her chest. "You are definitely right."

Clara caught herself on a breath, and stood still as he took a step towards her.

"I am a demon. The greatest of them all. But the question is, where would the universe be without her demon? Dead to nothing a million times over, is the answer. I killed because I had to. I killed to save."

"Not all the time."

_Lost. We are lost. We are dead._

"No? Oh, I suppose that's true. It is hard to exercise mercy when your enemies show none of it. It is hard to have hope when those you love always, always die."

"You can change, Doctor, please. I know you can. I'm the only one who can tell you that you can change."

"Change. I can _change_," the man standing before let loose a laugh so loud and flat and humourless that its echoes through the TARDIS sounded like anguished screams. "Now that, _that_ is true comedy."

The piercing gaze he was still sending her didn't waver, but Clara did. Those eyes, in this moment, were the most terrifying things in existence. Her voice quivered as she replied, "Doctor, stop. I'm trying to tell you-"

"Do you know how many people I've lost?"

"N-no-I..."

"Then how can you talk to me about killing, and mercy? You know nothing."

"I know more than anyone else," her voice was small as she took the tiniest step back.

"That's not enough. 1300 years, I've had. Hundreds of friends, companions, family, lovers. And can you guess what happened to them? _They all died._ And left me here, alone. Always alone, poor Doctor and his TARDIS. Oh, sure, it was I who killed a small number of them. It was I who caused some to sacrifice their lives. It was I who turned some to desperate warriors. _But I lost them all._ You try showing mercy after that. You trying not taking revenge on the universe for what it has done to you, it has turned me into this. A screaming raging demon who kills and kills and kills, does not save, does not help, does not heal. I believe that was something like your description?"

The horrible thing is, it was. But it wasn't all of who he was. It wasn't all. It wasn't even most. He was a good man, most of the time. But, for such an old, great one as him, most was not enough.

"Yes, but-no-I can-"

"You can what?" he suddenly gripped her by the shoulders, slamming her back against the wall, sending shivers of pain up her spine. "You, you can't do anything!"

She stuttered a little, she had gone too far, she shouldn't have tried this, she had unleashed the demon she herself was trying to get rid of.

"You are just the same of the rest of them! Just another one to love, to lose! That's all you ever are! And then you die, you run away, you're lost. Maybe I _have_ a hand in all your deaths. A killer, yes! That's me. The Doctor. Not a healer, a helper! A murderer! A mighty warrior...soaked, in innocent blood!"

She couldn't take her gaze off his eyes, even as his fingers dug painfully into her shoulders. Those eyes, there was nothing of the Doctor she knew in them. Just those shadows, burning bright in hate and rage and loss.

"How could you _ever_ understand? How could you have any comprehension of the pain I've been through, all those lives I've had to take? And do you think I chose this? Do you think I became this through some twisted whim of my own? No! Am I a demon? Or perhaps the real demon is the universe, not me! Perhaps the only evil is the path of time! How would you know?"

His face was millimetres from hers now, and the pain in her spine and shoulders burned almost unbearably

"You'll die too, one day. I'll lose you too. Why...why not just do it now, while the pain will be less?"

She could barely comprehend his words, her head was cloudy and tilting. But, at this, her heart pounded harder and faster. He wouldn't, would he? Would he?

She truly did not know.

"If I'm a demon, why don't I prove it? If I'm a demon, why don't I show you just how frightening I can be? Why don't I show you all this pain, that I feel every second, every single _moment_?! If I'm a demon, WHY DON'T I SHOW YOU _WHY?!_"

And then, with that last syllable, she was pulled forward and slammed back against the wall, her head cracked with a sharp stab of pain, and she cried out as she fell to the ground.

She curled up against the wall, instinctively throwing her arms over head and shrinking away.

When the throbbing in her head and arms had lessened such that she could open her eyes, Clara could not be prepared for what she saw.

The Doctor, standing above her, but backing away, shoulders shaking violently. And his eyes, they weren't _his_ eyes, but they weren't the eyes of the demon, either.

These eyes were wide, and shocked, and dull, and frightened.

And just as she gathered herself enough to drag herself up to lean against the wall, he crouched down before her, reaching out to tenderly touch her forehead, where a trickle of blood was dripping. She flinched, and supposed that he saw something flash in her eyes as he jerked back. Maybe it was fear.

"Clara?" his voice was so small, so weak. He closed his eyes and shakily stood up. "Clara."

The Doctor walked backwards a few steps, before sagging against the wall, and sinking slowly to the ground.

All the fear that had run through her just a moment ago, fear of the man before her, fled.

He had his head in his hands, and her own was shrieking with pain, so much so that she couldn't help the tears running down her cheeks. Because all of this, the physical pain in her spine, her shoulders, her skull; and the emotional pain, not hers but the Doctor's, so strong it would tear her own mind to pieces, hurting her so much even though it was secondhand. Perhaps that is why that demon lives inside him, imprisoned deep beneath. A manifestation of pain, and loss, grown from the witness and war against so much hate and evil.

And yet the good in him still stays strong, stronger than anything else.

And then it was her crouching beside him, reaching for his hand, trying to keep it steady despite all the stabbing in her head.

She took both his hands, young, unlined hands, and he stayed where he was: legs pulled to his chest, lying limply against the wall. His eyes were open, but unseeing, as he whispered, "You should leave."

"Should I?"

"I hurt you. I _hurt_ you. How did I do that? How could I? You're right. You're so right. I'm a demon. You should run, far away before I manage to hurt you more."

"No," was all she could manage to croak out.

He lifted his head, and looked at her. Those eyes, they looked like her Doctor again. Her Doctor, swimming in grief and guilt.

To her surprise, he didn't argue with her, he didn't protest, he simply said, "Thank you."

"You're welcome," she couldn't think of what else to say.

"No, I'm not. But thank you."

"I'll help you. I will."

"You'll try."

"Other people have helped. Everyone has. Rose Tyler, I saw her. She helped you recover from the war, gave you kindness. Martha Jones, she taught you to treasure what you have, to keep moving on from what you've lost. Donna Noble, she was the one who stopped you, who made you see the things you did. Amelia Pond, taught you about yourself, how easily it was for people to put their faith blindly in you, to follow you to the ends of the earth, however unjustified. Rory Williams, he showed you the way you remade people just like the worst parts of yourself. And me? I can heal you, too."

He was crying, now, silent tears glistening in the blue light. He brought his hands up to her face, and leant his forehead against hers. His eyes were closed.

"Nietzsche," he murmured.

"Sorry?"

"Friedrich Nietzsche. He who fights with monsters should see to it that he himself does not become himself a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss the abyss gazes into you. I met him once...and a half."

He sighed.

"Too bad I didn't listen to him."

He said these words with such softness, such tender emotion, that his eyes were suddenly all _him_ again. None of the demon, none of the blind fright.

Just him.

The Doctor.

All of this...the Doctor.

"Good thing you'll listen to me, then."

•••

_And then the scream is me._

_And I am the scream._

_And the scream is everything._

_And there is nothing else left._


	7. Madness-Supermassive Black Hole

**A/N Hello everyone! i have changed my penname again. I had a bit of a crisis. But this is (hopefully) permanent.**

**This is set later in the Doctor and Clara's timeline than we have seen, but the Name of the Doctor didn't happen. Yeah :)**

**Today's oneshot is actually based on two songs, both by the amazing Muse (THE DOCTOR LIKES MUSE TOO!). The songs are Supermassive Black Hole (which he played in the TARDIS once!) and Madness.**

**Thank you to all my lovely anonymous reviewers, my just as lovely non-anonymous ones (sorry if I haven't replied to you I'm very disorganised) as well as all of those favouriters and followers! You're the best.**

**P.S FOUR WEEKS FOUR WEEKS FOUR WEEKS**

•••

**_Supermassive Black Hole_**

_Oh baby don't you know I suffer?_  
_Oh baby can you hear me moan?_  
_You caught me under false pretenses_  
_How long before you let me go?_

_You set my soul alight_  
_You set my soul alight_

_Glaciers melting in the dead of night_  
_And the superstars sucked into the supermassive_

_I thought I was a fool for no one_  
_Oh baby I'm a fool for you_  
_You're the queen of the superficial_  
_And how long before you tell the truth_

_Glaciers melting in the dead of night_  
_And the superstars sucked into the supermassive_

_Supermassive black hole_  
_Supermassive black hole_  
_Supermassive black hole_

**_Madness_**

_I can't get these memories out of my mind,  
__And some kind of madness has started to evolve.  
__And I, I tried so hard to let you go,  
__But some kind of madness is swallowing me whole, yeah._

_I have finally seen the light,  
__And I have finally realized  
__What you mean._

_And now I need to know is this real love,  
__Or is it just madness keeping us afloat?  
__And when I look back at all the crazy fights we had,  
__Like some kind of madness was taking control, yeah_

_And now I have finally seen the light,  
__And I have finally realized  
__What you need._

_But now I have finally seen the end  
__And I'm not expecting you to care  
__But I have finally seen the light  
__I have finally realised_

_I need to love  
__I need to love.  
__Come to me  
__Just in a dream.  
__Come on and rescue me._

_Yes I know, I can be wrong,  
__Maybe I'm too headstrong._

_Our love is_

_Madness_

•••

"So..." Clara danced her fingers along the edge of the console. "how big is the universe? You must know. Is it infinite?"

"No, no. That would be silly!" he scoffed at her, spinning around to face her to emphasise his point. "Who wants an infinite expanse of everything? That's like one of your politicians. Eventually, it'll start repeating everything it's already said. No, the universe isn't infinite. It's just...endless."

"Isn't that the same thing?"

"No. You see, the universe is very /big/, incomprehensibly big, but it doesn't go on forever and ever. It just doesn't..." he wrung his hands about his head. It was always hard explaining these sorts of things. Especially since he was perhaps the only person in the universe to have such a knowledge. "...have a finishing point."

Clara poked her finger into his chest, rather hard. "You would be a horrible physics teacher."

"I'll have you know I was a brilliant physics teacher! What I'm trying to say is that there is an end to the universe, but there is nothing on the other side. And you can't really see nor contemplate anything on the other side. There _is_ no other side. So there isn't really an end, either. Because endings mean something new begins, and the end of the universe is just that. The end. So the end doesn't technically exist."

She crossed her arms, gave him that glare. "What about black holes? Aren't they pretty much the same as what you are so eloquently describing?"

"Yes. Well, sort of. Well...not at all, really. Black holes...black holes are more like great big pits of nothing, sucking and compressing everything else. Except it's not nothing. It's more like anti-everything. The opposite of stuff. Except its still matter. It's just...special timey spacey matter."

"That's basically what you said for the end of the universe," Clara shook her head, spinning away from him and walking around the console. "Nonexistent anti-stuff."

"Stop simplifying everything I say! They are two very different things."

"You'd already simplified it, chin boy. 'Timey spacey'? You don't need to dumb it down that far for me, thank you very much."

She reached the other side of the console, and he spun around to look at her. "This is very complicated stuff here, Clara! We're not talking..._algebra_, it's highly advanced physics of existence! Not many people even _know_ about the end of everything!"

"Why don't we take a look then?"

She couldn't be serious. _"Take a look at the end of the universe?"_

"No, nimrod. At a black hole."

"The incredulity still applies."

"Come on," Clara leaned forward on her tiptoes, precariously near. He sort of liked the closeness, the way she was looking at him, and felt himself blush at the realisation.

She raised her eyebrows at him, murmuring, "Look who's going red?"

He stumbled back quickly, jumping around and resetting the TARDIS coordinates with a few buttons and levers. "Don't say I never take you anywhere nice!"

"Wouldn't dare."

The TARDIS landed with the familiar boom, and Clara followed him over to the doors, suddenly looking uncertain.

"We're not gonna get sucked in or something, are we?"

"Of course not! The TARDIS has the best black hole resistors for any transport machine this side of the 376th century."

"Well, then I apologise for doubting it. Your snog box isn't known for reliability."

"It is _not_- oh look, do you want to see this black hole or what?"

"Course," she gestured at the doors. "After you."

He slipped past her to open up the doors, swinging them out into empty space. There was the black hole, of course, trillions of kilometres away, hanging in empty space.

That was it. A black hole.

Clara wasn't speaking. Why would she? Wasn't anything _he_ was too impressed by. Just one of millions.

But he looked over at her, and the expression she wore was as mesmerising to him as the sight was to her.

Wait.

Mesmerising?

Was that the sort of word he used to describe her now?

She flicked her eyes up at him, the sudden movement meaning the Doctor cleared his throat and turned his head sharply away.

But then, he found, he didn't find much in the sight before them, couldn't see much in the relatively small and unimpressive void. And some little wish made him look back at Clara.

He couldn't, wouldn't, admit it to her, but the wonder and peaceful joy of her smile made something rise in his throat. Perhaps it was the same emotion that she was experiencing, just at something else.

It was only then that he registered that his arm was around her shoulders. He retracted it hurriedly, glancing at her sidelong, but discovered he felt just a little more old and lonely with both arms by his side and awkwardly set it back.

He hoped she wouldn't notice.

Her soft warmth pressed closer against his side. Apparently, she had.

He pretended to be intent on a small planet entering the black hole's event horizon.

How did his hand come to be clasping hers?

"Look," the Doctor pointed to the planet, which was now being devoured by the void, using the movement to drop his arm from around her and shuffle a centimetre or two away. "It's being spaghettified."

She looked up at him curiously. "It's being what?"

"Spaghettified. It's the technical term for when matter is stretched and distorted by the infinite gravity of a black hole."

She laughed. "I swear you're making this up."

"No, actually. Well, sort of. I came up with the word myself. But your space people adopted it."

She laughed again, longer, lighter, the laugh she did when she was amused by him, or when he failed to maintain his usual suave charm.

And then, curse it, he was holding her hand again.

What was he doing?

Wasn't he done with the whole...relationship thing? Hadn't he had enough of all that came from...whatever this was?

What was happening in his head?

He'd always admired humanity. Even wanted to be one of them. But he'd never imagined he'd feel something like this, all those conflicting thoughts and memories and emotions. He'd never imagined he'd ever feel so..._human_.

He loved it.

And simultaneously loathed it.

Alright.

Okay.

He wanted to kiss her.

That was very, _very_ human.

And also very, _very_ mad.

Imagine.

To be human.

Oh.

To be human.

To live a life of eighty years, to learn and love and grow and burn out, to feel and forget and flicker and die. To not be plagued in every second by the aggressively permeating paths of time.

To be human.

To live, to love, to die.

He blinked. She was looking back at him. Her eyes were still alight with a reflection of awe.

"Hi!" he said quickly, but it probably sounded more like a squeak.

She did a little smirk-smile. "Hi."

_Idiot_.

He flicked his gaze reluctantly back to the black hole, and the once-planet now being spaghettified and swirling around into nothing.

He knew its name. He knew its story. Diiigel, or a sound similar, it was called by the inhabitants of a planet in the same solar system. It had a whole religion behind it, the giant glowing blue sphere in the sky of those people. It was a god, a deity, a king to them.

And now it was turning to nothing but particles, a mass of electrons and protons and neutrons to expand and eat up more and more and more. So deeply futile to think of denying the force of the black hole, which only very few people had ever truly learned the physics behind. This planet, once a god, sucked in so impossibly and yet so irrevocably by this infinite and undeniable force of the universe.

He imagined himself, as Diiigel, pulled and stretched and torn apart. From a deity to atoms. From a god to...what? A human?

_If you are the last of the Time Lords, how can you know that you are still one of them, without anyone to compare yourself to? Without anyone to feel at home with?_

_Are you human, Time Lord?_

He wished he was, but wasn't sure of the reason behind this wishing.

He blinked again. He was staring at her. She was wearing a puzzled expression, smiling just a little.

Alright.

Okay.

He dropped his hands to her shoulders, she turned to him as he did, raising her eyebrows, oblivious.

So many uncertainties...

...but even more potential regrets.

Did Clara know? She wasn't smiling anymore. She was biting her lip, looking everywhere, but glowing.

He wanted this. He shouldn't, but he did. He wanted this feeling. He wanted this sense of humanity he had never experienced ever before.

Should he? He wasn't the type to kiss people. Usually other people kissed him. Was that how it worked? He didn't pretend to be familiar with the societal rules and labels associated with this kind of thing.

When he had been standing still for just a second too long, he leaned forward. It was just like kissing her forehead or hand, which he had done before. Just...on her mouth. And a bit longer.

Okay, a lot longer.

But she wasn't pulling away, so, why not?

He still wasn't exactly sure where his hands were supposed to go, he placed one tentatively on her neck and left the other to swing awkwardly by his side.

How long had it been? What had happened to his acute sense of time? What had happened to the billions of thoughts running through his mind all at once? What had happened to the ever present awareness of the vortex crawling through each moment?

He felt like Diiigel, age-old, immense, godlike, reduced to his elemental parts, in a moment completely inconsequential in the infinity of being.

He felt human.

With Clara, he felt human.

Which, he knew, was absolutely mad.


	8. Heartstrings

**A/N hi again. How are you all? I'm sinking into a mess of stress, procrastination, lost sleep and oblivion, thanks for asking. **

**Thank you all for reviewing, I got like a ton of reviews last chapter. Today I would like to thank you all individually because you're so nice. Here goes. **

**Extraordinary thank yous to: LeilaTheGalaxyDefender, Dancer-with-Duende, MeghanMurray, KaraokeLeo, , MadMan-in-a-SnogBox and Reader244, along with all my lovely guests. Extra special extraordinary thank yous to: only-the-sassiest, RememberMeWhen, runyoucleverboy-remember, lifewithdaleks, TimeSpaceAnomaly, RandomVictorian, AMysteriousWoman711, whoufflemysouffle and, last but certainly not least, daisy-chains-and-bowties. You're the bestest, and I am justified in this abuse of proper grammar.**

**Another thing, I've written a oneshot thing. It's called Time Lord Defeated, and based on the Waters of Mars ending. It would be really cool if you all checked it out :)**

**Due to aforementioned stress, insomnia, endless void etc etc I won't be updating very frequently for the next few weeks. But then I go on holidays and I, with my ghost town of a social life, will be back to writing more. :)**

**Today's song is Heartstrings by Pegasus Bridge. Everyone please applaud only-the-sassiest for recommending this band to me, as they are brill. But have also broken up after one album. *cries***

**Also, my French is far from fluent, so please correct me if its wrong. **

•••

**_Heartstrings - Pegasus Bridge_**

_Skin keeps your heart in_

_When you're one still believing_

_And the skin that we're living_

_Is slightly constricting. _

_Is it the real thing, you are living in?_

_Is it a lesser you, that you're living through?_

_Just think what it might be like,_

_to live like that every night. _

_And think what it might be like,_

_to live like that every night. _

_Stay if you want to,_

_I know that I'll miss you. _

_But I've got to see things,_

_That can pull out your heartstrings. _

_ I dare. _

_Is it the real thing, you are living in?_

_Is it the lesser you, that you're living through?_

_Just think what it might be like, to live like that every night_

_And think what it might be like, to live like that every night_

_Just think what it might be like, to live like that every night_

_Just think what it might be like, we live like this every night_

_To live like this every night_

_We live like this every night_

•••

She didn't scream.

She didn't cry.

She didn't make a sound.

The silence, the unwavering, violent silence of her sleep, seeped into every crevice and corner of his mindless mutterings, into every heavy nothing that the clanging of the TARDIS echoed into.

It had been three days since Trenzalore. Three days, three nights. And in all that time Clara had spent there, running around with his other selves, preoccupied with making sense of the new revelations about the man she had been travelling with, she hadn't slept once. And the past few days, she'd simply been wandering alone about the TARDIS corridors. He'd left her to her thoughts, but was almost certain she hadn't caught a wink in that time either.

Eventually, the Doctor had found her curled up in a corner leading to one of the libraries. Absolutely dead to the world. She looked so much like her old self, like the person she'd been just a few days ago. When she was Clara Oswald, and no one else.

He'd carefully lifted her into his arms, so little, so light, and carried her over to the nearest room the TARDIS produced. It had felt like he was holding a skeleton, a fragile shadow of someone else, if he dropped her she would shatter into thousands of shards of white bone. As if the pieces would scatter into all those people Clara had created, dull and bright white, rotting fragments of a once perfect whole.

Perhaps that wasn't so far from the truth of the situation.

The Doctor had been careful, meticulous, as he laid her down on the bed. Making sure her limbs rested just so, and she was securely tucked under the blankets. He'd put a glass of water and some biscuits on the nightstand, left her a short note for when she woke. He'd even found her a toothbrush and left it out for her in the adjoining bathroom.

He'd done everything he could, until there were no more excuses for staying.

Now, listening to the heavy silence soaking through the TARDIS walls, he wished he'd been able to persuade himself to at least settle down in the corridor outside.

He pretended to fiddle with the navigation circuits, but was really just listening. For any sound at all.

It was hours before he heard anything that wasn't the occasional sparking of wires. And that anything was not what he had expected.

"Billy?" The call echoed from a darkened hallway. It sounded like Clara. There was no one else it could have been but Clara. But, even so, he dearly hoped it was not.

"Billy?" she called again, and he saw her appear at the mouth of the corridor. "Billy?"

He hesitated before answering. "Clara? Clara- are you alright?"

She looked at him surprisedly. "Oh- sorry sir. I didn't mean to be a nuisance. I'll be out of your way, sir."

She was about to turn back the way she came when he ran up to her. "No- Clara. What are you doing?"

"Sorry, sir. I think you must be-" here she faltered, frowned. "You must be mistaken. I'm Clare, sir. Clare Oswald. I'm sorry for getting in your way, sir."

At this, he felt as though all the hope he had physically sank. Or, more accurately, threw itself into an undeniable whirlpool. He'd wished with all he had to avoid this, that maybe she would get better easily, that maybe she wouldn't have to go through this.

"No, you're _Clara_," he said strongly, putting a hand on her shoulder.

She looked at it, as if wondering why it was there. "I'm-I'm-I think you must be mistaking be for someone else, sir. See, I'm looking for a boy. He's-he's about nine or so, blonde hair, skinny. Have you seen him, sir?"

He studied Clara's eyes, they were unnaturally hazy. Her words were ever so slightly slurred, too, and her movements just a little slow. Perhaps, in the searching void of dreams, she had begun to confuse herself with someone else. To _think_ she was someone else.

"Is he your son?" he asked softly.

"No, sir. He's-he's my adopted son. I suppose. We're down along near Greenwood, it's hard living 'round that way, but we get by. I suppose you don't have to worry about that much, do you, sir?" she smiled a little, a fake smile.

"Clara-"

"Sir, my name's Clare. Now, I must get going, if you haven't seen Billy anywhere..."

"Clara, Billy isn't here."

"Why do you keep calling me that, sir? And-and you said you hadn't seen him?"

He took a deep breath. "Clara, you do not have an adopted son called Billy. You do not live near Greenwood. You are not Clare Oswald."

She blinked several times, her lips turning down. "I'm sorry, sir?"

She still thought she was someone else. She still had forgotten who she really was. But how was he to make her remember? To jump into another's time stream- it was impossible. No one had ever done it before.

How could he know if she would remember herself?

How could he know if she would get better?

How could he know if she would survive at all?

He took her hand from where it hung by her side, clutching it tightly even as she flinched.

"Sir," she said. "Sir, can you let go of me please, sir?"

He quickly slipped the cloudy silver band from her finger, and let Clara's arm drop. She began to back away.

"I think I should go now, sir-"

"Do you know what this is?" he strode forward with her, holding the ring between two fingers before her eyes.

"A-a ring, sir," she muttered.

"Yes, but who does it belong to? Who _did_ it belong to? How old is it? Who bought it? Why do you have it? What is it for?"

"It-it-it-" her eyes were wide, but for a second some sort of recognition flashed in her eyes. She seemed to force it away. "It's a wedding ring. An old silver wedding ring."

"Why do you have it, Clara? Who gave it to you?"

"I-I- it was my mother's...it was-it was-no, it wasn't, no, I don't, my mother isn't married, my mother doesn't have a ring, my mother is dead, my father is dead, he didn't give me a ring...he didn't...he..." she swayed a little on the spot, her eyes unfocused. "This isn't my ring."

"That's right, it's your mother's, Clara, that's _you_-"

"My ring's not silver. It's gold," she squinted at the band between his fingers. "My ring has a diamond."

The situation was steadily whirlpooling into chaos, into something he wouldn't be able to fix. "No, Clara. That's not _yours_. This is yours. Your mother's."

She looked shocked as she snapped back, "Not my ring? Who are you to tell me that? My ring is gold, it's mine, and why do you care?"

"Clara, Clara _Oswald_..."

"I think you have the wrong person, I'm _Oswin_."

"But you aren't Oswin, you're Clara," he felt his voice deteriorating from a calm tone to desperation. He reached for her arm, but failed to grasp it.

"I'm-who are you? Get away from me!" she backed away quickly, "That isn't my ring, what do you want from me? Are you one of Harry's friends? I've told him before, Lawrence and I want nothing to do with him!"

"Clara, Oswin, I don't want anything, but you have to remember. This isn't you, this is someone else." He held up his hands to show he meant her no harm, tried as best he could not to show the pain than stabbed through him at the sight of fear in her eyes.

"You're insane! Get away from me! I'm Oswin Palmer, I'm-I'm-"

"_Clara!_"

She stopped again, her expression went blank. "Clara."

"Yes! Clara! You're Clara, my Clara!" He wanted nothing but to crush her in a hug, to press her to his chest and whisper to her all the things that he knew she was, as Clara, as Clara Oswald...

"I...I..." she frowned at her feet. "Où...où suis-je? Qui...où est...oh mon dieu..."

And then she started speaking French.

"Monsieur, je suis déolée, oú suis..." she started swaying from side to side again. "Je suis très fatiguée...ma tête...my-my head..."

Clara took two shaky steps towards him before staggering against the railing. She would have collapsed to the ground had he not steadied her.

He held her up by the shoulders, she was barely standing, her eyes unable to focus.

"Clara? Clara, this is you. _Clara_?"

"I learnt Spanish...I learnt...Spanish in high school..." she mumbled, her speech swimming tiredly across the space between them.

"Which high school? What's your name? Who are your parents? How old are you? Clara?"

"I-I didn't learn any French...how can I..." and then she seemed to lose her ability to both speak and maintain consciousness, and fell forward onto his chest.

This time, he didn't take her to the lifeless, featureless room he had laid her down in before. This time, he gathered her up in his arms, pressed a kiss to her forehead, and set off through the TARDIS corridors.

It was a long walk, as always, to the room. Took at least ten minutes of aimless wandering for the door to present itself. He'd always wondered why the TARDIS hid the room like this, and decided that there were plenty of good reasons to choose from.

He placed his hand on the silver doorknob, dusty despite the TARDIS' usual automatic cleaning. He hadn't been in this room for years, could barely recall the last time he'd opened the very same door.

He pushed it inwards.

It was just the same as the Doctor remembered.

He stepped over the threshold, kicking the door shut behind them, and strode over to the bed in the centre of the room to lay Clara down upon it. Spread the blankets over her, propped her head up on a pillow.

Then he straightened, and had no more excuses. He looked around.

It was not a big room, but not a small one, either. There were no walls, just floor to ceiling bookshelves wrapping around him until they reached the wooden blue door. The bed was the only other piece of furniture in the room, the rest just cold and empty air.

The room had undergone a change or two since he had last entered it, some hundred years back. He knew every page of every book, every face of every photograph that rested on the shelves, and walked directly over to the new additions.

Right behind the headboard, in between a couple of volumes on Gallifreyan history- which he'd never read, nor did he want to- was a photograph. He didn't remember it being taken, as with all the other such photographs in the room, but he remembered the people in it.

They were smiling, the three of them. He had his arms around their shoulders, and each looked both amused and content. Lying next to the frame was a detective novel, with a yellowed letter bookmarked between the pages.

At first there was a stabbing in his chest, and then he just felt tired.

He didn't smile, but might as well have, and patted the wood of the bookshelf. "Thanks, old girl."

Another thing he'd always wondered, was why the TARDIS had created this room. He barely used it, and even then hardly ever for its original purpose. Most nights he found he couldn't bring himself to drag his feet here, and, if necessary, simply slept in the chair by the console.

If he ever had a chance to speak to his TARDIS again, that would be something he'd ask her.

With a cold and heavy chain weighing down his ankles, the Doctor turned, went to the door and rested his hand on the knob.

For the first time in his life, he was reluctant to leave that room. Looking back at Clara, sleeping so soundly– thanks to the psycho-somnial aura present– he wanted more than anything to lie down beside her.

She hadn't slept in days, he hadn't slept in months. And the rather uncomfortable prospect of the seat in the control room wasn't nearly as appealing as the alternative.

He should stay anyway, shouldn't he? Leaving her alone before had resulted in a drastic collapse of her cranial identity and memory structure. If she were to deteriorate any further, he may not be able to save her at all.

One minute. Two minute. Three.

He stood slowly, felt like his limbs were controlled by some other part of him. A more compulsive, indulgent part.

It was then, looking down at the sleeping Clara- just his Clara, not one of the hundred copies who were not quite as brilliant as this one- that he realised just how tired he was.

When was the last time he had slept? Certainly not within the past eight weeks, and even then no more than a few hours on a hard chair.

Every inch of his itching aching skin yearned for the feel of soft cotton, his eyes burned and spun for the prospect of rest, his mind sighed long in the imagining of sleep.

He kicked off his shoes, slid off his coat, and dropped both to the floor along with his common sense.

Even Time Lords needed sleep. He'd always been somewhat of an insomniac, but not a wink of rest in over two months had to be pushing it. And suddenly it was like all of the heart-wrenching revelations of those months sank to his feet, leaving his head light and hazy.

He lay down slowly, forced his eyes to stay open though they yearned to close. Clara breathed softly next to him, nestled under the covers as he lay over them, and he watched her for the time until he could no longer command his brain to see.

Which was less than a minute.

In the dark, he could still hear her, her heart beat too. Beatbeat. Beatbeat. Beatbeat.

But his own was louder.

The four beats of something not human.

In the void and this powerful rhythm, his mind conjured up a fleeting image. He wasn't sure where it came from, or why. But it was there.

It was Clara. Clara, as herself. No one else. Just the Clara he knew, the Clara who leapt into his time stream. The Clara who lost her mother. The Clara with her book of 101 places, and crinkled old autumn leaf. The Clara with her unwavering compassion, the Clara who was there when another mother died and saw fit to help. The Clara who answered the door while he was dressed as a monk. The Clara who was so very brave on a Russian submarine. The Clara who saw his name in a book in a library, then forgot it as it never existed. The Clara he sacrificed his own self to save. The Clara who everyday managed to tug discreetly at his heartstrings. That Clara. His Clara.

No one else.

Just minutes later, it could be observed that the old Time Lord was lost in a web of dreams, sinking gratefully into unconsciousness. It could also be observed that the young woman next to him was beginning to stir, mumbling forgotten names to people long swept under the rug of oblivion, hands reaching for ones whose lives hadn't even begun.

Her eyes opened, she looked all around her with a steady hand on her forehead. Her eyes were clouded at first, like she couldn't seem to hold on to what she was seeing. But then she caught sight of the sleeping figure beside her, and squinted over at his peaceful face. She seemed to recognise it, it raised a more natural light in her eyes.

She looked troubled for just a moment after, then appeared to be unable to keep from drifting back to sleep, which she almost immediately did.

She didn't even notice that the man lying beside her had a tight grip on her hand.


	9. Hopeless Wanderer

**A/N greetings readers, friends, and (possibly) stalkers! Here is, finally, the next instalment of our little one shot thing here. This is similar to the last one, but set a few months after Trenzalore in alternating perspectives. Clara's POV gets quite confusing and messy, which is kind of the point. Also there's a few little things that might be hard to catch (I believe in showing, not telling!) so read carefully. **

** The song is Hopeless Wanderer by Mumford and Sons (please YouTube it? You won't regret it!)**

**p.s on a completely unrelated note, referring to the vessel that holds flowers, is it pronounced 'vaase' or 'vayse'?**

**p.p.s like my new cover? Yes, I finally made one. :)**

**p.p.p.s sort of maybe very minor trigger warning? I don't know, not exactly sure what a trigger warning is. But there is a very indirect and shrouded mention of depression etc? I don't know best be safe than sorry. **

•••

**_"Hopeless Wanderer"_**

_You heard my voice I came out of the woods by choice  
Shelter also gave their shade  
But in the dark I have no name_

_So leave that click in my head  
And I will remember the words that you said  
Left a clouded mind and a heavy heart  
But I was sure we could see a new start_

_So when your hope's on fire  
But you know your desire  
Don't hold a glass over the flame  
Don't let your heart grow cold  
I will call you by name  
I will share your road_

_But hold me fast, Hold me fast  
'Cause I'm a hopeless wanderer  
And hold me fast, Hold me fast  
'Cause I'm a hopeless wanderer_

_I wrestled long with my youth  
We tried so hard to live in the truth  
But do not tell me all is fine  
When I lose my head, I lose my spine_

_So leave that click in my head  
And I won't remember the words that you said  
You brought me out from the cold  
Now, how I long, how I long to grow old_

_So when your hope's on fire  
But you know your desire  
Don't hold a glass over the flame  
Don't let your heart grow cold  
I will call you by name  
I will share your road_

_But hold me fast, Hold me fast  
'Cause I'm a hopeless wanderer  
And hold me fast, Hold me fast  
'Cause I'm a hopeless wanderer  
I will learn, I will learn to love the skies I'm under  
I will learn, I will learn to love the skies I'm under  
The skies I'm under _

•••

THE DOCTOR

In a way that the Doctor could not specifically discern, Clara was very different to most of his other companions. Or maybe the point he was going for was that she was different in terms of her relationship to _him_.

And that difference was the reason why he always had to second guess himself when he thought about hugging her, reign himself in when he looked at her too long, and convince himself that he wasn't, in fact, just thinking about gathering her in his arms and never letting go.

He'd never had a saviour before. He was always someone else's, whether willingly or due to his simply being present. But Clara Oswald had saved him, she had saved _him_, meaning he had to save her too. Without fail.

She'd been staying on the TARDIS for the past few months or so, now, and the Doctor wasn't exactly sure why. Before, she had been adamant about returning home, and even scheduled a time for him to arrive there every Wednesday. He didn't want to ask her why this arrangement had stopped, so allowed her the continuous travelling without question.

But, lately, she had been starting to scare him.

The eerie episodes she'd suffered immediately after Trenzalore had ceased, and now she slept soundly. She was recovering, rediscovering herself, better than he thought she ever could. Which was good. Brilliant.

That wasn't the problem.

It wasn't something he could put his finger on, not something he could label, not something he could lock away in a jar and hide in a forgotten cupboard. It was a mess of things; uncertain glances, flinching hands, nervous words. But the Doctor was observant, and he was also anxious.

When he allowed himself to inspect the bones of the situation, he realised what he was so worried about.

Ending.

How could he know that she didn't regret that precipice of a day at Trenzalore? How could he know whether she was falling apart on the inside, where he couldn't see it? How could he know that she wasn't simply staying with him because she couldn't bear to go home?

He was a wanderer in the fourth dimension, one who was rarely able to hang on to any he met. So, when he did, he clung all the more tightly.

What if he had to let go of Clara?

•••

CLARA

The flowers were on her bedside table.

Daffodils.

There was a folded up note beside the vase. She thought about reading it, but something stopped her. She couldn't force her muscles to work.

So she stared. She couldn't say exactly why.

There was something about the flowers, their colour, their shape, their arrangement, that caused something to flicker at the back of her mind. Like a shadow of an emotion. A sorrow she couldn't quite remember.

There was a knock on the door. It was strange, the Doctor usually entered without waiting for invitation after rapping on the wood. But he seemed to be waiting today.

"You can come in," she called.

There was a muffled reply, and another knock. Clara sighed, standing up and going over to let him in.

He stood in the hallway, with a smile that didn't quite fit on his face, shifting from foot to foot. "Hi! How are you?" he asked, much too enthusiastically.

"I'm fine..." she answered warily. Something was up, she could tell from the way he was fingering his bow tie, grinning too widely.

"That's good! Did you like the flowers?"

She cast a glance back at them, but couldn't forget the sinking weight that settled in her chest at the sight of the bright yellow blooms. "Sort of. Thank you."

He stopped moving, became a rigid statue, barely breathing. "...sort of?"

"Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I have some connection to them in another life. I'm not sure."

"So...you haven't read the note?"

"Not yet."

He visibly relaxed, but grew anxious again in the next second, slipping past her into the room.

"Thought they might cheer up this dreary room the TARDIS gave you. Found them in a cupboard."

Clara raised an eyebrow, but didn't ask how on earth a vase of flowers managed to stay in pristine condition for however long it took the Doctor to forget about them.

"Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?" he continued, less certain. She wished he would just come right out with it, instead of dancing around like he had been doing all these past months. "I have a nice little planet in mind. No man-eating snake aliens this time."

Her eyes flicked back to the vase of flowers, and she couldn't shake the feeling that they planted in her.

She didn't see the Doctor's face fall, but heard it in his tone. "Or...or do...do you want to go home?"

_Home_.

The word hung in the air for a moment, before forcing itself down Clara's throat like a bullet from a gun. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't speak, how to think, how to feel?

_home_.

Before she could stop herself, she flung out an arm, knocking the vase of daffodils to the floor, where the glass smashed into shards and water puddled across the floorboards.

The Doctor's sharp breath was an echo, from some other time, some other place.

Still the flowers lay, shining yellow, happy, bright, in a graveyard of glass and forgotten things.

_How could she have forgotten?_

She wanted to hate herself, then, because she _had_ forgotten. Again. She'd forgotten.

"Are-are you alright, Clara?" came the Doctor's echo of a voice, and his echo of a hand on her shoulder. There was cold floor beneath her, but was that just an echo, too?

There was one real thing, twelve real things. The bunch of daffodils, petals scattered, resting in still water that reflected back nothing.

Twelve daffodils, blooming in a glass vase on the kitchen table, where her mother had placed them.

Twelve daffodils, hidden behind her father's back, while Clara sang an out-of-tune happy birthday in a young, sweet voice.

Twelve daffodils, messily painted by an eight year old Clara, framed in a prime place on the living room wall.

Twelve daffodils, freshly clipped from their own garden, waiting for someone to display them in all their wilting and odd-sized beauty.

Twelve daffodils, dull and crinkled, waiting for their new-bought replacements that never did come.

Twelve daffodils, resting on a white wooden coffin, much too bright for the black everyone wore.

Twelve daffodils, clutched in her shivering fingers, their petals ripped away by the wind that dried away the tears just as they came tumbling down her cheeks.

Twelve daffodils, fresh and sunny gold, stark on the wood of the dining room table, still in the cellophane and ribbon, which accompanied another unopened condolences card. And, beside them, a scrawled piece of paper, a tipped over bottle of medicine, a glass of water, and an empty chair.

This last one was the realest of them all. And she clung to it.

The bottle was small and white, marked with indecipherable type. The cap was off, the little white tablets scattered over the table.

The paper was a ripped up Chinese take away menu. There were three words, in an inky blue pen. It was hard to tell who these words were directed towards, her, or her mother?

_I love you_, it said.

Back then, she'd thought the very, very worst.

She'd even thought about...about...

"Clara? Clara?"

The Doctor had both hands on her shoulders, in some echo world.

And, in the real world, to relief so immense it was barely fathomable, she heard her father coming in the front door. She spun around to him, standing in the hall with an expression that did nothing to quell the fierce anger that rose in place of the fear and shock that had just been consuming her.

In this fit of blind desolate rage, she lashed out, casting the flowers, the note, the tablets, and the half full glass to the floor.

But this wasn't the real world. Not anymore. It was a memory.

But she had forgotten it.

She had _forgotten it._

"Clara, talk to me, Clara!"

It wasn't an echo. It was _her_.

"Clara, please!"

Out of all things, she had forgotten the daffodils. She had forgotten her mother. She had forgotten that dreadful day when she'd feared the worst, and let herself feel anger for the first time in months.

It wasn't like she hadn't seen this coming.

It had started with the smallest things, and she'd thought it would stay at that. Her favourite book, movie, brand of chocolate. The way she took her coffee, the rare times she didn't prefer tea. Her father's middle name. Angie and Artie's birthdays. The day of her first kiss. The face of her favourite university professor. Her first home address. Phone numbers. Names. Pictures. Places. Sounds. Sights. People.

But they were just little holes. Just pinpricks in the skin of her mind.

This was a chasm, one that had temporarily made her forget one of the turning points of her life. One of the biggest, saddest, most frightening moments. Along with all the others that were strung along behind, the beautiful ones.

To forget any of those memories, either happy or sad, perfect or painful, would be a stab to her mother's still, dead heart.

But which mother? Which memories? Which heart?

Which of the thousands?

The mother who died so young, the mother whose ring she wore? The mother who forced her to grow up too fast, who shoved her into an unwanted job and an unwanted life? The mother who was caring and supportive, even through illness, and outlived her by decades? The mother who never had time, nor wish, nor feeling to spare? The mother who hid behind a shadow of a father, hovered as a ghost along the sidelines? The mother who she never knew but dearly wished to know? The mother she knew for fifty years but dearly wished she didn't?

Too many mothers, too many hearts, too many memories to forget, to remember. Which ones did she have to keep? Which ones did she have to lose?

The daffodils, the funeral, the pills on the table?

Or the silent house, the empty cupboards, the wedding ring abandoned on the doorstep?

The crying children, the dyed-blue hair, the bank account that was almost always empty?

The gunshots, the cold mud in her boots, the enemy who was both human and had nothing of humanity?

The dying stars, the darkness engulfing her home, the last embrace with a lifelong friend before they both went cold?

The lilting piano music, the roaring applause, along with the misogynistic remarks that, back then, were taken for granted?

The rush of wind and ice and cold, the feeling of flight and a parachute at her back, the sight of an entire world so far away and yet far too close?

The thin fingers clutching hers, a warm shape always at her side, and soft blue eyes as the last thing she sensed?

The whining dogs with illness and injury, a menagerie in her back garden, waking up at ungodly hours to a chorus of chirps and howls?

The unseen home she set out to find, the years of wandering and yearning, the final realisation that he was wanting for a place that didn't exist?

Which one did she want? Which one did she need?

Fear?

Ecstasy?

Fatigue?

Poverty?

Uncertainty?

Warmth?

Comfort?

Love?

Understanding?

Death?

Cold?

Sound?

Yearning?

Regret?

Life?

Confusion?

Wonder?

Pain?

Echoing?

Silence?

Disappointment?

Awe?

Weakness?

Constriction?

Ignorance?

Pride?

Immorality?

Control?

Rush?

Knowledge?

Safety?

Rules?

Discrimination?

Resignation?

Strength?

Peace?

Wrath?

Rage?

Empathy?

War?

Hope?

Which did she want to remember?

Which did she want to forget?

•••

THE DOCTOR

It was always building up to this.

He'd thought Clara was getting better, but probably she was just hiding the fact that she wasn't.

And this was the moment. The tipping point. The moment these past months had been steadily climbing to. The day all those hundreds of years of disconnected memories and unnamed faces became too much. The day Clara Oswald started to fade away.

And there were so many places she could disappear into.

So many places for her sobs of pain, shouts of rage, unknown tears, to burrow into his mind.

It tortured him almost as much as he imagined it did her.

Glass dug into his shins, water and blood soaking through his trousers, while Clara writhed on the ground in front of him. She whispered nonsense, yelled protests, and cried names he only vaguely recognised.

This was the tipping point. He'd known it would come, though he'd hoped hard enough to delude himself that it would not. At this moment, he could either save her, or destroy her.

He said her name. Scanned her with the sonic. Rested steady hands on her shoulders. What else could he do?

He kept talking to her, not quite knowing what words were spilling from his lips, streaming forth like he was a cupped hand held under a waterfall. There was too much here, she was screaming too loudly, thrashing too wildly, speaking in a voice that was too unlike the Clara he knew...

He needed to bring her back. She was losing her grip. She was losing her mind. He needed to help her find it, and hold it tightly to her heart.

He was still speaking, whispering, shouting, more and more, faster and faster, louder and louder. Still, she babbled and sobbed and shivered.

What was there to do?

In the end, it was less of a solution– less of an answer, less of a revolutionary idea– than simple instinct. It was emotion, it was him, it was automated, it was crazy. It was full of thought, and without it.

He took her jerking head firmly between careful hands, and pressed his mouth hard to her lips.

Thoughtful, and thoughtless. Logical, and illogical. Easy and difficult. Simple and complicated. Everything and nothing. Real and unreal. Essential and unneeded. Pure and tainted.

_You are Clara. You are my Clara. You are not lost._

She'd stopped moving.

He wasn't quite sure what that meant.

He let his arms slide around her shoulders, resting his head atop hers, and held her as tightly as he could.

He whispered into her hair, hoping she could hear him. He said her name. He needed her to listen. To her name. To him. To herself.

Clara's hands found their way to his chest, clutched at the lapels of his jacket. Her face was pressed into the place where his two hearts beat, and she was silent but for long, irregular breaths.

The Doctor looked over at the graveyard of glass and flower petals on the floor beside them, and the waterlogged note that was blossoming with running ink. He picked the paper out with a free hand, and reread the few simple words, barely legible now, that were scrawled upon it in his own hand.

He crumpled it up and plunged it deep in his jacket pocket, where it would never be read by the person it was written for.

•••

**A/N no, I'm not telling you what the note said. This is one of those things that YOU, as a reader, decide. You can make it up from what you have gathered of these characters, your own experiences, your own wishes, and your own thoughts. Perhaps tell me what you think, because this is me as a writer giving you the freedom to create your own little thing and add to the characters in your head as you see them.**

**Bye for now,**

**themadmanhopes :)**


	10. Not One Of Us

**A/N so this is kind of a companion piece to Supermassive Black Hole/Madness. It's got the same sort of main idea. Except this is from Clara's POV. **

**Wait also can we please talk about the 50th trailer. I REALLY need to let some of these feels out. Or I might explode. Okay here we go I have a list, it may not be coherent but I do have a list:**

**1. Rose as bad wolf...I think. Whatever. Still...my rose!**

**2. John hurt John hurt John hurt and is that red crystal thing the moment? TIME WAR OH MY GOD**

**3. Eleven has a fez! His last ever fez-wearing! Cry**

**4. David FRICKING TENNANT. What happened to your antigravity hair? But still sexy as ever might I add hahaha I'm a sad person**

**5. The sonic thing ohmygod. Also the specs. **

**6. Eleven and ten's synchronised sassy thing! (can you ship the doctor with himself? Is that incest?)**

**7. Lastly, who-fricking-ffle. Clara cries. CLARA CRIES. I'm gonna cry. That double hi five thING. SO CUTE MY BABIES. THEY WERE TOTALLY GONNA KISS OKAY. also spinny hug. SpinNY HUG. SPINNY HUG. GIGGLING AND LAUGHING IN A SPINNY CLOSE HUG AROUND THE TARDIS. I AM DEAD. **

**ahem. **

**As you can see the 50th is going to cause me to dissolve into a puddle of feels. Meaning I will not be able to function due to my being liquid emotion. I apologise for dumping my feels on you. Okay here it is goodbye and thank you. **

**P.S whoops I forgot the song is called 'Not One of Us' and its from the Lion King 2 (yay for nostalgia). It was recommended by TimeSpaceAnomaly, big thank you to her, you go girl. **

**P.P.S this involves Martha Jones because she is a bamf and I love her and also I have always wanted to write her and Clara meeting. It's set before Martha left UNIT, and when UNIT was still a big bunch of dickheads. pre-TNOTD. **

**God these A/Ns are getting to be really long and sort of unintelligible and capslocky. Sorry about that. **

•••

_Deception_

_Disgrace_

_Evil as plain as the scar on his face_

_Deception (An outrage!)_

_Disgrace (For shame!)_

_He asked for trouble the moment he came_

_Deception (An outrage!)_

_(He can't change his stripes)_

_Disgrace (For shame!)_

_(You know these Outsider types)_

_Evil as plain as the scar on his face_

_(See you later, agitator!)_

_Deception (An outrage!)_

_(Just leave us alone!)_

_Disgrace (For shame!)_

_(Traitor, go back with your own!)_

_He asked for trouble the moment he came_

_(See you later, agitator!)_

_Born in grief_

_Raised in hate_

_Helpless to defy his fate_

_Let him run_

_Let him live_

_But do not forget what we cannot forgive_

_And he is not one of us_

_He has never been one of us_

_He is not part of us_

_Not our kind_

_Someone once lied to us_

_Now we're not so blind_

_For we knew he would do what he's done_

_And we know that he'll never be one of us_

_He is not one of us_

_Deception_

_Disgrace_

_Deception_

_Disgrace_

_Deception_

•••

This time, when she pushed open the TARDIS doors, Clara was greeted with nothing but an irritated whir from above and the familiar glowing chamber that now radiated emptiness.

And a ringing phone.

The sound was so out of place in the TARDIS, echoing jarringly back from the metal walls, too harsh in her ears. As if in answer to the ring, there was a crash and a shout from somewhere close in the maze of corridors.

"Clara? Can you get that? I've just got –bit of a problem...or maybe–fine, it's a quite big bit of a problem...maybe even an entire problem..." whatever his next words were going to be, they were drowned out by another crack and a roaring rush of water.

The frantic splashing and gurgling echoing back from the corridor didn't sound particularly good, but she heard another shout of "answer the phone!" and figured the Doctor valued this call more than whatever water damage he was causing his TARDIS.

It took her at least another three rings to locate the phone, a slim mobile hidden on a shelf under the console, scattered in dust and vibrating angrily. There was no caller ID, just a blocked number.

She pressed answer, wondering who on earth–or any other planet, for that matter–would be calling the Doctor on a 21st century mobile phone.

"Doctor, finally! Thought you'd never answer the thing."

It was a female voice, young yet authoritative and irritatingly unfamiliar. "Hello?"

There was a pause. "Who're you?"

"You're the one calling."

"This number can only connect to one person. What are you doing with that phone?"

"Heard of telephone etiquette?"

The woman on the other end muttered something she couldn't pick up. "Dr Jones, UNIT, scientific and medical advisor."

"Clara Oswald. You want the Doctor?"

Dr Jones, UNIT, etcetera etcetera, sighed. "Yes, I do."

Finally the Doctor emerged from one of the hallways, dripping wet and brandishing a waterlogged top hat. "The old girl may have confused the wardrobe with the swimming pool."

"A certain official-sounding Dr Jones for you." She pointed at the phone. "She says its-" she listened as Jones continued. "a Dalek? Dalik? Something creepy sounding."

•••

"Martha Jones, hello! Long time, no see, eh?" the Doctor tipped his still damp top hat at the only person in the room who actually looked happy to see them. The rest were bustling around with grim lines for mouths, and dull daggers for eyes.

Dr Jones–Martha Jones–smiled, more at the Doctor than Clara, and inspected them with a skeptical sweep of the eyes.

"Not exactly how I would have pictured this new you, going by the voice."

"What's that supposed to mean? Oh–no one appreciates the bow tie," he adjusted the item of clothing in question, scanning the faces of a group of straight-limbed officers passing them. "Bit gloomy, aren't they? Need a hug, maybe, or perhaps just some toffee crisps."

Martha smiled thinly. "Definitely the Doctor. And...Clara, Clara Oswald?"

"Just Clara, thanks. So, you've had a run in with the Doctor before?"

"A run in? Or fifty!"

"Any near-death experiences?"

"More than enough," finally, Martha smiled.

"Alright, alright, chitchat later," the Doctor stepped forward, rubbing his hands together like he did when he was pretending not to be anxious. "Where's the Dalek?"

"We've been keeping it in secure quarters-"

"Have you talked to it? Harmed it?"

Martha let out a deep breath. "Doctor, you know I joined UNIT to transform them, to help them learn about these things. I've changed a lot about them, but...not everything."

She didn't allow him time to reply, and motioned to a couple of passing officers, who saluted both her and the Doctor, before leading them out of the room and down a less crowded corridor.

Clara elbowed the Time Lord in his side as they walked stiffly along, tilting her head at Martha, where she strolled slightly ahead of them. He replied with a lopsided shrug and a whisper of "good friend, few years ago, different face, long story".

"But what's UNIT? You can't just tell me it's an 'alien MI6' and expect me to follow along!" she hissed back. He'd given her a brief explanation of the Daleks, UNIT and how exactly someone could call him in the time vortex, but all of it had been rushed in his characteristic eagerness to set off.

"But that's what it _is_!" he murmured back, sweeping his hands around through the air, as if brushing away her stubborn curiosity.

Clara sighed, deciding that it didn't really matter and that she could probably gather some more useful information from this Martha Jones, or some other UNIT person. The woman in question seemed pleasant enough to Clara, if you were able to get past her initial stoic trained-military disposition, which she had strangely when speaking to the Doctor.

They stopped before a large metal door, one that looked virtually impregnable for all its heavy bolts and electronic alarms. The officer who had shown then the way set to work on ardently disarming the variety of wards, before giving the three of them a salute and taking a stance by the–now open–doorway.

Clara filed in after the Doctor and Martha, while the second officer stepped in behind her and swung the door shut.

"We have to maintain maximum security in this room. Our occupant is...somewhat of an anomaly," he nodded at the Doctor.

But the Time Lord wasn't listening. He had turned, and was staring over Clara's shoulder at the end of the room that all the overhead lights were focused on. She turned with his still expression–all facial muscles straining to remain neutral–at the forefront of her thoughts.

The creature, or machine, was draped with steel chains as thick as her leg, reflecting the bright artificial LEDS into her eyes. It was metal, probably, with a couple of malicious-looking appendages and a stalk that glowed blue at the end, perhaps whatever could pass for its eye.

In itself, it didn't look like an evil thing. At least not as evil as the Doctor had described to her, back on the TARDIS. He'd used phrases such as 'divinely hateful', 'lusting after violent supremacy' and 'the most infuriatingly unmerciful abominations the universe has dreamt up'.

This thing, this hunk of metal and electronics, did not strike quite the same intense distaste in her own mind. But, of course, she did not know what was inside.

"We found it out in an unoccupied area in Wales. Just wandering around the moors. It hasn't been aggressive, it let us capture it easily. Since then its just been babbling. We're not quite sure what to make of it."

The Doctor had been slowly stepping forward, and now stood directly before the Dalek as it stared right back at him.

"Who...are...you?" it croaked, in a peculiarly curious electronic voice.

"You know who I am," he answered lowly.

The Dalek paused, its eyestalk quivering. "I don't. I don't know who you are."

The Doctor's brow twitched. "I am the Doctor. Surely you know that name."

"No. I don't. If you aren't going to let me out of here, leave. That's what all the others do. After they've sent those monsters in to slash my skin."

It struck Clara that the Dalek's speech patterns weren't what she would have expected from a blood-lusting warrior. The vicious monotone voice didn't quite match up with the words. And these monsters, what did it mean?

The Doctor frowned again, she supposed he noticed it too. But it seemed as though he, unlike her, knew what it meant.

"What is your name?" he asked softly.

"Why should I give my name to a man who does not give me his, and stands so resolutely outside my prison?"

"I can help you, just tell me."

Martha stepped forward, started to protest, "We aren't authorised to unchain it–"

"Not _it_, Martha. Not _it_," he didn't take his eyes off the glowing blue light. "What is your name, I'll ask again?"

Another lapse in sound, where the lights on the top of the machine pulsed as if in thought. "Rogers. Will Rogers. I suppose you know that name, everyone does these days."

The Doctor's face morphed into that expression again, that one she knew so well now. That one he made when he realised something terrible, saw something terrible, or knew he had to do something terrible. This time, Clara got the impression that it might be all three.

Martha was standing off to the side, obviously perplexed. It was the previously grim-faced officer who spoke, however.

"But-but that's a human name! How have you gotten it to talk? We haven't been able to get it to respond at all, much less-"

"That's because this Dalek is not an _it_!" he swung round, glaring at the man. "You've captured, tortured, and chained it, haven't you? I know you've been interrogating it, I know you've been using pain against it!" he was almost shouting now, in that ferocious tone that wasn't quite a yell but was definitely more intensely emotional than his usual babbling.

"Sir, the Dalek is an unquestionably homicidal alien," the officer started to say. " It does not–"

"Not _it_, _he!"_

He?

"Will Rogers!" the Doctor continued, spinning around on his heel. "Infamous serial killer, 31st century! Murdered a starfleet captain, stole a ship, never seen since! Wanna guess what happened to him?"

Was this Dalek once a human? Was that what he was implying?

"The Daleks! That's what! Will Rogers was a genius, he had to be, to do what he did. He was also hateful, and psychotic, and angry, all those traits the Daleks just _love_. So they converted him into one of them, on their little planet for all the ones that go wrong. Emergency temporal shift's working, then BAM! Relocated to a field in Wales. And that's where _you_ people find him, to lock him up and stick him with pins, electrocute him, test his limits, find his weaknesses! And all along, he's been _human_!"

The shouts echoed in Clara's ears, it was hard for her to piece everything together, he was just yelling nonsense that only half made sense. But the officer was cowering at the door, he looked afraid, with a hand on the holster at his hip.

"You UNIT officers with your guns and your machines, your weapons and your scanners! You think you're doing the best for the earth, but one day you're going to do the worst!"

"Doctor!" she stepped over to him, grabbed his elbow. She was going to say something more, but couldn't find the words, nor construct them into an adequate reply.

He looked at her, mouth pressed thin and taught, but relaxed his jaw. "Right. Right. Yes. Sorry, sorry, uh, mate," he murmured, patting the officer on the shoulder. The other man still didn't let go of the butt of his gun.

Martha was standing in the same stance as before, with an expression on her face that was more saddened than shocked. "Doctor," she warned. "Will Rogers. The Dalek."

Clara looked over at it–him–where it was still under all those chains.

Then it spoke a word that did not belong in its angry, synthetic tone.

"Christ."

In that single word, Clara could believe that this monstrous cyborg really was human.

"Will Rogers," the Doctor stepped forward. "Will Rogers, how did you get where you are?"

"How are...who are...what do you mean, Dalek? They've made me into one of them?"

"Where are you?" he fired back another question again.

"I'm-I'm," the voice choked a little, if that was possible for a machine. "I'm in a room. A prison cell."

"How long have you been there? What have you been doing?"

"I–I think–about four months. There's a tele-screen in here. And–and there's..."

"There's what, Will?"

"There's the monsters. They started sending them in a couple of weeks ago. I don't know what they are. They hurt me."

"They hurt you. Will, could you tell me what you've been eating, drinking? How have you stayed alive?"

"I–I haven't. I haven't been eating. How–how have I...?"

"You are not in a prison, Will. You are a human consciousness inside a Dalek body."

The eyestalk twitched about for a second. "I've been here...I've been in prison..."

The Doctor reverted to his I'm-clever-everyone-listen-to-me voice, which was a lot less frightening for everyone, however irritating. "You are an evil man, Will. You've killed so many innocent just to quench the inferno of your mind. But humans, inherently, are not evil. There is a part of your mind that still wishes to be good, and a part of your mind that will never give up its humanity. This overrides the Dalek tendencies that were implanted in you. The world you are living in is a...reflex, if you like. A survival reflex of your human mind to preserve its humanity."

Not a sound.

Not a movement.

Not a thought.

Then the Dalek/Will Rogers said one short sentence.

"I regret them."

Regret who? Did he mean...

"I regret all of them. Afterwards. But then it builds up again. I can't stop myself. I need to do it. I need their desperate screams. I need their hot blood on my hands. I need the rush of adrenaline as I run from the corpse. I need it all. But I regret it. Afterwards."

The Doctor seemed unable to form words. So Clara did, for him.

She didn't exactly _want_ to speak to this monstrous man-machine serial killer, in fact she was quite averse to the idea. But she did.

"Will?"

No answer.

"Will, you _are_ still human. In mind."

Again, silence. But the Doctor placed a tense hand on her shoulder, as if urging her to step away. She ignored it.

"Humanity isn't in body. It's in mind."

"I stopped being human a long time ago, lady."

Clara had no idea how to respond to that. She felt like a simple sorry was both not strong and unfitting.

But Will continued. "I just want...I just want to feel it again. I'm a Dalek. Can I feel...pleasure?"

The Doctor pulled at her hand, but Clara felt she couldn't move.

"Can I feel...regret?"

She was about to step away when the metal pronged appendage on the front of the Dalek twitched, and she barely registered a white flash shooting out of it before her body went totally numb, and she was seeing only the cold metal floor.

Her mind was fuzzy, disjointed, like static on a television screen, she couldn't move her head to see what had happened, could just see the iron ridges under her cheek.

"Clara! Clara!"

Her sight shifted, the world spun, and she was upright again, propped against the Doctor's arms. Feeling was beginning to return, though creepingly, and she blinked away the dots from her eyes.

"She's fine! She's fine! We disabled the execution ray, don't worry! We couldn't hack the system well enough to extract it entirely, but it only give a slight shock, that's all!" Was that Martha?

There was a hand on her cheek, the Doctor's hand, but then it was gone as he left her to lean against the officer's shoulder, who led her out of the room.

It was only when the door was shut and bolted that Clara remembered that she didn't want to leave the Doctor alone. Not now. But it was hard enough forming words, much less arguing with the UNIT officer...she just wanted...her mind wasn't as messy now but...there was a pressure on her head...she just wanted...wanted...

nothing.

•••

There were voices. Drifting, dancing, chasing at the edge of her hearing. The Doctor–was it?– but his words were tighter, too controlled. And Martha Jones, but hers were the opposite.

"I had to do it, Martha. There was nothing else."

"Of course there was something else! There's always something else! You're the one who taught me that. At least, the _other_ you!"

"It's UNIT who made the final call. I only recommended it."

"They wouldn't have done it without your recommendation!"

"He deserved it, Martha! He was a killer, he killed hundreds of people! And he was a Dalek, who's to say he wouldn't access the hive mind, rebuild his circuitry, run amok? Six billion humans don't stand much against even one of those killing machines!"

"He was human, you said it yourself! He was a human being! What's the real reason you killed him? Because that's what you've done, you've murdered him, an innocent man!"

"He wasn't innocent, and he wasn't a man!"

"He didn't harm anyone! He was regretful!"

"He would have killed her, Martha! I THOUGHT HE'D _KILLED_ HER!"

Then...silence. Sharp footsteps heading away. A sigh.

Silence again.

Clara wished she weren't awake. She wished there was something to fill the silence with, other than her own voice.

But then there was a rustle, and a creak, and finally sound as she felt a hand on her forehead and tried not to flinch.

But the gentleness of his hands, the hands she knew had just done a very terrible thing, made her twitch away. And suddenly, she couldn't stand it anymore. She couldn't stand _him_ anymore.

She sat up, letting his hand fall away, and looked right at him.

"What did you do?" she said.

He looked back at her, but not at her. He was staring into her eyes, but he was also staring at something she could not see.

Very slowly, very carefully, he replied, "I advised the UNIT head officer to shut down the electric systems of the Dalek, cutting off the life support for the creature inside. The consciousness was still partially in a dream state, and it was entirely painless."

Clara swallowed. She'd hoped, even after the conversation she'd overheard, that the worst was not true. But in her experience, she'd realised that it usually was.

"He was human, Doctor."

"He was a Dalek. He hadn't been human for a very long time."

"He had a human mind."

"He had a Dalek form, and Dalek impulses. He would have murdered so many, still. Those beasts have killed trillions, extinguished entire races from the universe. They are the lowest form of evil."

"He regretted everything. He wanted to be human. I thought that's what we were about, mercy, second chances?"

The Doctor opened his mouth to answer, probably with another meaningless argument, but there was a knock on the door. Martha entered, pointedly ignoring the Doctor, and smiled at her.

"You feeling better?"

"I'm...mostly, yeah, thanks."

"Okay if I look you over? There _is_ a reason I'm the medical advisor," she laughed hollowly, flicking her eyes over to the Doctor. He seemed to get the message, and stood up, brushing himself down, before exiting the room.

After Martha double checked her pulse, eye movement, and asked several questions about headaches and coordination, Clara finally said something.

"Did he used to do things like that, when you knew him?"

Martha spent a minute putting away her stethoscope in a bag before saying, "He was different, then. Different face, different personality. But a lot of things are the same. And, yes, he did things like that. It was up to me to try to stop him."

"I wish I had."

"It isn't your fault. I tried my best, and you were unconscious. I just wanna give him the slap in the face he deserves."

Clara laughed a little. "Don't worry, I've given him enough of those to last a lifetime."

Martha smiled back sadly. "I should hope so. He needs it, sometimes."

Her laughs died away into a heavy silence, weighed down by the combination of both of their thoughts. Clara stood up, she'd had enough of these silences.

Before she could go out the door, she heard Martha say something that froze her hand in place on the doorknob, "I know you love him."

Clara took a breath in, and out.

"The Doctor, I mean. I did, too. For a while."

Another breath.

"You shouldn't."

That was what made her turn around and shoot back an answer. "I hardly think an almost stranger can dictate the rules of my nonexistent love life," she covered up the steel in her own voice with a short laugh.

Martha didn't react. "He's not human, remember that. He's a Time Lord. He's not like us. He doesn't see things the same way. He'll do the same to you as he did me. The only thing you can do is move on."

Clara shrugged, half to pretend this conversation wasn't affecting her in the slightest, and half to convince herself that she didn't have to pretend.

"Please, you're smart, I know. _Get out_."

Clara laughed again. Even to her, it sounded fabricated. "What are we, high schoolers? Platonic relationships _do_ exist, you know. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a Time Lord to slap."

•••

As it turned out, she wasn't able to tell the Doctor what he deserved to hear.

And here they were, standing far apart like they hadn't since her very first day on the TARDIS, while the Doctor twiddled with the controls.

She was still thinking. About the Dalek, about Will Rogers, about his death, about the Doctor's shout that she would have been killed, about Martha and about the man himself as he stood before her.

But was he a man?

He'd informed her of his being an 'alien' on their very first meeting. Along with his two hearts, and twenty seven brains.

She got the feeling he'd lied about much more than simply the number of neural organs in his head.

_He is not one of us. He is not human._

Did that matter, to her? Not really, but did the lack of humanity go further than simply physicality? Was it that this man was missing some of those inherently human traits, some of those very important things that should have held him back when he did what he had done today?

When she thought about, she supposed that perhaps it wasn't that he was missing some things, but it was that he had too much of others. Anger, for example. Arrogance, vengeance, loss, regret...perhaps even love.

He'd thought she was dead, he'd become emotional. She knew from experience that it was emotions that caused his mistakes.

The Doctor was just a man. Just a thousand year old man who had seen too many things, and was grasping at the fraying threads of his own morality. Not a human, surely, but still.

Just two decaying hearts pounding faster to keep themselves warm.

"Can you take me home?" she asked simply.

He nodded, after a moment, and set to very deliberately pulling levers and spinning knobs, sending them back to the Maitlands'.

When the TARDIS landed, the Doctor opened the doors for her and she stepped out. But she had a thought, from his resigned expression and heavy movements, and turned back around to face him.

"Next Wednesday, right? Same time?"

"Yes, of course!" he exclaimed. "Next Wednesday."

The look in his eyes said otherwise. In fact, they screamed it to the heavens.

She took his hand, which took less effort than it should've. This hand holding thing had been almost subconscious lately, so it wasn't surprising.

He smiled, a half-fake one, but a smile all the same. That's when she stood on her tiptoes and quickly kissed his cheek. "Next Wednesday."

With that, she spun around and up the path to the house, with the Doctor's embarrassed blush still imprinted on her mind, his eyes crinkling with innocent fondness she knew he would never admit to.

He definitely wasn't human.

But Clara definitely knew that she could help him to be; not in body, not in strength, not in mind, but in morality, if nothing else.

•••

**A/N so how'd you all like that? Pretty please tell me what you think. I've been feeling a bit sad/scared/stressed/generally unstable lately and you would not believe how happy those reviews make me, even thought they only take a second to write. Please talk to me. Especially about Doctor Who. And the trailer. And the 50th. ExcitemENT. **


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